By the late 1990's I was convinced that silicon could ameliorate aluminium (aluminum in the US!) toxicity in a range of cereals (see Aluminium/silicon interactions and Aluminium/silicon interactions in cereals). We also had a lot of evidence that Al and Si were co-deposited in the needles of the conifers (see Mineral deposition in the conifers), and this may represent a tolerance mechanism. We reviewed this possibility in: HODSON, M.J. & SANGSTER, A.G. (1999) Aluminium/silicon interactions in conifers. Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry 76, 89-98. Abstract

However, no hydroponic Al/Si interaction experiments had been conducted, and so co-deposition may just have been a coincidence! Michelle Ryder helped to fill this gap, and produced this paper on the topic:

RYDER, M., GERARD, F., EVANS, D.E. & HODSON, M.J. (2003) The use of root growth and modelling data to investigate amelioration of aluminium toxicity by silicon in Picea abies seedlings. Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry 97, 52-58.

My next research student, Subramaniyam Prabagar from Sri Lanka, continued this work on in collaboration with David Evans (Oxford Brookes). We wondered whether the amelioration that could be observed in whole plants also happened in cell suspension cultures:

PRABAGAR, S., HODSON, M.J. & EVANS, D.E. (2011) Silicon amelioration of aluminium toxicity and cell death in suspension cultures of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.). Environmental and Experimental Botany 70, 266-276.