What do corn roots have in common with your Facebook profile?
No, that was not the beginning of a joke. The two have more in common than you might think. We often think of a corn plant as a single organism. But plants are part of a network of relationships, sort of such as Facebook. These plant relationships are easy to overlook because they are hard to study. Still, they are very important because they affect how healthy plants are.
Soil is full of millions of microscopic bacteria and fungi. These microscopic organisms are collectively called microbes. Some of these microbes form close partnerships with plants. Plants can rely on microbes to help them get nutrients that are scarce in soil. Microbes break down dead plants and animals, and this process slowly releases nitrogen, phosphorus, and other elements that plants need to grow. When plants cannot get enough of these nutrients on their own, they can send out sugars from their roots. The energy microbes get from these sugars helps them break down even more dead plants and animals. If enough nutrients are available in the soil, though, plants would rather keep their sugars for themselves.

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Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00037