Arsenic in rice - understanding a new disaster for South-East Asia

A study by Yongguan Zhu and co-workers has added greatly to our understanding of arsenic dynamics in the rhizosphere of paddy rice. Their finding that arsenic is sequestered in iron plaque on root surfaces in plants, regulated by phosphorus status, and that there is considerable varietal variation in arsenic sequestration and subsequently plant uptake, offers a hope for breeding rice for the new arsenic disaster in South-East Asia the contamination of paddy soils with arsenic.