Despite the costs of producing a larger root system, PDR1 OE plants are still able to produce more shoot biomass when grown on soils that are suboptimal for wild‐type plants. The morphological changes in the root system architecture of PDR1 OE reported here show that many of the phenotypes observed when GR24 is exogenously applied, such as root hair elongation and lateral root induction on low Pi soil, can also be obtained simply by overexpressing the SL transporter, even independently of the soil nutrient conditions. A critical point about exploiting the PDR1 overexpression strategy for field‐grown plants is the possible presence of parasitic weed seeds in some soils and regions (Parker, 2012). Also, a tradeoff with PDR1 OE‐increased biomass production might be a higher sensitivity to drought and salinity stress: SL is reported to induce drought and salinity tolerance in Arabidopsis (Ha et al., 2014). We have preliminary data suggesting that PDR1 OE‐expanded leaf blade might cause higher transpiration in water‐limited conditions compared with the wild‐type. However, mycorrhization is known to alleviate drought stress (Ruiz‐Lozano et al., 2016) and the increased exudation of SLs from PDR1 OE roots induces higher mycorrhization levels than in the wild‐type, which might balance drought and salinity sensitivity. On the other hand, SL‐driven approaches have also been shown to be effective against parasitic weeds, such as suicidal germination, which promotes the germination of parasitic weeds in the absence of host plants (Kgosi et al., 2012; Khosla & Nelson, 2016). Besides, a PDR1 overexpression strategy could provide a solution to improve plant nutrition for crops that are not hosts for parasitic weeds or grown on fields without parasites. PDR1 overexpression may also be combined with two approaches that have already been proposed: overproduction of citrate (Lopez‐Bucio et al., 2000), which was shown to have a positive effect on phosphate nutrition; and/or overexpression of ABCG37/PDR9 (Fourcroy et al., 2014), which was reported to exhibit a positive effect on iron nutrition via coumarin exudation.