Plant Biology

[Munchie]

What tests can be done to get the effects of mycorrizhae on plant roots.....

 

any ideas?!i have a lab!

[rakuenso]

IF i'm correct mycorrhizae is the symobiosis of mycelium and the roots of the plants.

 

You would set up a control, plants without the addition of mycelium and another one with a fungi that lives in symbiosis with a certain plant. I suggest radishes for the plant since they are relatively easy to grow.

 

I know for bacterias, rhizobium would be a good canadidate, but your doing fungi. For fungi you could try it with Streptomyces coelicolor.

[Glider]

The easiest to work with would be pine. They have a symbiotic relationship with exomycorrhyzae (many other plants are associated with endomycorrhizae, which exist inside the root cells of the plant and are harder to work with).

 

With pine, the mycorrhizae exist as a creamy white 'matting' around the roots, easily visable to the naked eye. To test the effects of mycorrhizae, you would simply need to give your test sample a soil drench with a garden fungicide, backed up with a dose of systemic fungicide.

 

These will not harm the tree, but will eliminate the mycorrhizae. Then simply compare the growth and vigour of your treated sample to an untreated control, provide the same levels of feed, water and light for both.

 

This is based on a mistake new bonsai growers often make; treating a pine for something like powdery mildew with a systemic fungicide, which wipes out the beneficial mycorrhizae as well as the bad fungus.

[Munchie]

WOW! thanks for the replies! i think im going to actually do the practical on the pine 1 as uve put it in so much detail! what eqiupment, method and timescale do u think would be appropiate? this is for my honours project u see! have to have what im doing submitted within 1 month from today! ill do some background reading now but if u want to add me to msn i will be greatfull... i have a pine tree in my backgarden and i also live near formby woods so this project would be ideal!

thanks mate! msn is mmalh0151@hotmail.com

take care!

[Glider]

I don't think it's really practical for a project on that time-scale. Pine are slow growers, they put out one flush of growth per year. If you were going to see a difference in vigour between your experimental and control plants, it would take a year at least. Plus, at this time of year, everything is beginning to enter dormancy anyway. No tree is going to grow noticably until next Spring now.

[Skye]

Why not raise some faster growing plants under differing nutrient conditions?

[Sorcerer]

I don't think it's really practical for a project on that time-scale. Pine are slow growers, they put out one flush of growth per year. If you were going to see a difference in vigour between your experimental and control plants, it would take a year at least. Plus, at this time of year, everything is beginning to enter dormancy anyway. No tree is going to grow noticably until next Spring now.

 

Or under 24hr lights.... pehaps 18/6 because plants do need time to rest.... well it doesnt increase their growth rate anyway... not for *cough* tomatoes anyway.

[YT2095]

Radishes might be ideal for this, they grow VERY fast and being a root veg, it would be easier to manipulate directly

 

you could have all the results done in under a month

[Munchie]

Why not raise some faster growing plants under differing nutrient conditions?

 

Yes that could be possible...like increased amounts of pottasium for 1 plant and oxides for another etc?

[YT2095]

if we`re talking MACRO nutrients, you`ll find Nitrogen and Phosphorus equaly as important as Potassium. 4 test beds would be required (the forth as a control).

[Sorcerer]

if we`re talking MACRO nutrients, you`ll find Nitrogen and Phosphorus equaly as important as Potassium. 4 test beds would be required (the forth as a control).

 

I don't think thats very important, if he wants to speed up the growth of pine seedlings for his experiment he just have to have it equal all around, so added nutrients, extra light and extra water and care... plus K isnt that important unless the plant is flowering/cones.... N and P are important for leaves and roots respectively.

 

One thing that will have to be taken into account in the study is that it will be the effect of Microhorrizae on pine seedlings growth under excellerated growth conditions..... not under normal conditions, perhaps you could find a faster growing plant with external symbotic mycellium.

[YT2095]

although I appreciate what you`re saying, the point was directed towards Munchie.

yes I understand that a general all round feed is required (I like to use Gromore feed personaly).

 

and the idea of a fungus assisting a tree isn`t alien to me either

Truffle spore impregnated trees are available for instance although expensive.

 

I`m still wondering IF it has to be an Arborial experiment or whether of not (as outlined in the original post "a plant")?

 

hence my Radish suggestion

 

 

edit: oh yeah, and it`s spelled "Microrizae"

[Munchie]

right so if i grow radish....take away the Microrizae from the roots of it and study that...think that will b a good experiement? radish contains endomycorrhyzae meaning i would have to disect the plant root and observe the Microrizae under a light microscope...

Bearing in mind this practical is on a timescale, radish is not a bad idea! its at Degree level science so a suitable plan of methods etc will have to be developed....i have no idea wat im actually going to do tho and the lit review of wat im going to do has to be in in under 1 month!!!

[YT2095]

use the raddish then, they germinate within2 to 4 days and are usable in the way of root manipulation within a few days after that, (you can eat them after 3 weeks!) and they occupy little space and require only basic treatment, they`re a great starter project for kids interested in growing things because they`re so fast, and kids attn spans tend to wander and they have little patience, this gives direct observable results withing days

[Glider]

edit: oh yeah, and it`s spelled "[b']Microrizae" [/b]

 

No it isn't. It's spelt "Mycorrhiza" (s) or "Mycorrhizae" (Pl).

 

See

 

http://www.btinternet.com/~colinlewis.bonsai/Reading/Myco.html#What%20are

 

For some information on it.

 

Do radishes live in symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae?

[YT2095]

odd, because when I tried Cut`n`paste into Google, it tried to correct the spelling (although there were hits with the variation)?

 

as for my raddish suggestion, it was based on it being a large and very fast growing root, and I`ve seen fungal "infections" on a few in the past. it would require research to determine this roots compatability, sure. but it was presented as an Idea

[Sorcerer]

Ok, I've never actually paid attention to the written word, and when I heard lecturers etc talking about it they always made a soft H sound, hence I thought I'd better stick an H in there.

 

I didn't think that annual plants would have much of a symbiosis with fungi, perrenials are definately the way to go.... perhaps you could treat a full grown tree in the feild with fungicide and observe the effects.... a control and controlled experimental conditions would be harder to establish though. Maybe cuttings of pine would allow you to establish a larger root system faster and get comparisons of growth rate, it might even remove the need for fungicide treatment... but maybe you'd have to innoculate the cuttings instead.

[Glider]

YT: I think Americans spell it differently.

 

Sorcerer: No, annuals don't form such a relationship with mycorrhizae. Treating a full grown tree would be extremely difficult, as would measuring any results. The loss of the mycorrhyzal simbiont doesn't kill the tree, it just results in poor growth and lack of vigour. Taking cuttings from pine is extremely difficult with a low success rate.

 

If pine were to be used, it's easy enough to buy a small established tree from a nursery. They're cheap enough, but they are slow growers. The reason I chose pine over other, deciduous species is that pine have a relationship with ectomycorrhizae which is easy to see, and easy to remove. Other species have relationships with endomycorrhyzae which don't form large visible networks of hyphae, but tend to exist as individual cells within the root cells of the tree.

 

In any event, in bonsai, the practice when repotting pine is to innoculate the new soil with some of the old. Chemicals released by the new growing root tips trigger gernmination of the fungal spores and a new colony starts. If you don't do this, the tree doesn't die, but it's growth is slower and generally weaker than that of trees with a healthy mycorrhizal colony around their roots. As pine only put out one flush of growth per year, it takes a year or so to see the failure to thrive (e.g. the new buds on the second season would be smaller and sparse, the candles from those buds would be shorter and the eventual needles would be shorter and paler), and then, you could really see it only by comparing the weak tree to healthy trees of the same species.

[Sorcerer]

So, if using a plant with endomycorrhyzae a systemic fungicide would be necessary. With ectomycorrhizae only a soild drench would really be necessary. As I think you said in an earlier post. I think that a study into plant growth rates could be done, using plants with endomycorrhizae, but dissection of the root would be necessary to determine erradication of the fungi.

 

Well I wasn't thinking of using a full grown tree, just an established tree... I admit it would be difficult to determine the result when the trees weight is a ton or so...

 

Perhaps a faster growing species would work, such as eycaluptus... these have been used to provided fast growing softwood here, I think this may be a better option, even if you have to deal with endomycorrhizae.

 

Perhaps, even better, find a study that someone else has done from a journal and just repeat it and confirm its results..... This is all I have thought was expected of an honours project, either that or helping with a doctorate, new studies are really only needed for a thesis.....