Mycorrhizal Experiment: The Interaction Effect

Abstract

Our experiment was to test to see how mycorrhizal effected plants in native soil and sterilized soil.  In our hypothesis we thought both Sorghastrum nutans and Sorghum bicolor that was inoculated and in living prairie soil would have greater chlorophyll content and a greater height. In this experiment we transplanted Sorghastrum nutans from Johnston Seed CO. Enid, OK and Sorghum bicolor from “Macia” variety; USDA.Twenty-four tubes were filled with sterilized soil while another twenty-four tubes were filled with living prairie soil. Twelve of each plant were then placed into the two different soil types.Of those twelve, six were inoculated with commercial mycorrhizal fungi. We transplanted each plant into its tube by putting the roots first into a hoe that was made with a scoopula.Rulers were used to measure stem height and a SPAD meter was used to measure chlorophyll content of each plant each week for five weeks.An ANOVA test was used to determine significance between the four treatment groups. After collecting data we realized our data was marginally insignificant for all the treatments. Our hypothesis was not supported by our findings in the experiment. Beyond the effect of individual treatments we found a unique trend in the cooperation of treatments and their effect on both plant species, the interaction effect. The interaction effect demonstrated opposing trends in stem growth as inoculated Sn plants would grow more in live soil but the non-inoculated Sn plants would grow more in Sterile soil. We learned that mycorrhizal is not for all plant species it may be good for some but could hurt others or just have no effect.