Evolution and agricultureGood catchSome crops can absorb phosphorus from dustWheat was among the first plants to be domesticated and is now the most widespread crop in the world.It thus sounds unlikely there would be much left to learn about what makes it thrive.Yet, some 12,000 years after relations between people and wheat began, a wheat plant has been caught doing something unexpected.It helped itself to a dose of much-needed phosphorus when its leaves received a coating of desert dust.The plant(or, rather, plants)in question were in the care of Avner Gross of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel.As Dr Gross told this year's meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which took place online during the first half of December,his study was prompted by hikes he had taken near Neve Shalom, his home village in the Judean Hills.On these, he often noticed plant leaves completely covered in dust that had been carried there by sand storms from the Sahara desert.It occurred to him that this dust might not be the light-blocking nuisance it appeared at first sight.It could, on the contrary, be beneficial because of the growth-enhancing elements such as phosphorus which it contained.Until then, botanists had assumed that phosphorus in dust landing on a plant was of little value,
