How Roots affect the future

Abstract

Bothriochloa ischaemum was more responsive to the sterilized soil throughout the experiment and was generally the tallest in these treatment groups and had the greatest number of leaves. It fared better in the treatment we added the commercial inocula to. Our commercial inocula was Earth Juice-Rooter’s brand, which had a wide spectrum of mycorrhizal species. We believe because of the wide variety of species, one was more responsive to the plant than those in the live soil. Because of the sterility of the soil it gave way for those mycorrhizae to grow with the roots. We also feel the grasses did not have enough time to build stronger relationships with the fungi, as the Andropogon gerardii was mostly unaffected by our treatments.

Sources for error include during our process for getting stomata samples we had many issues with collecting usable samples. Originally we tried using translucent tape, and could not get a good count. When we changed to clear tape some plants had already had nail polish applied and were showing signs of chlorosis where it was applied, possibly affecting our total biomass. We also had difficulties counting stomata possibly leading to inaccurate count.