Natural and Synthetic Mycorrhizae Symbiosis with Bromus inermis and Elymus canadensis

Abstract

Premise of the study:  The purpose of this study was to test the effects of mycorrhizae and see if it benefits the two species of plants Bromus inermis  and Elymus Canadensis in sterilized and live soil.  This work is important because if there is plants can benefit from mycorrhizae then this could greatly increase plant production.

Methods: We tested the effect of wild mycorrhizae versus commercial mycorrhizae on the chlorophyll content and blade width of the grasses Bromus inermis and Elymus canadensis. Our four treatment groups were divided into commercial mycorrhizae in a non-sterilized prairie soil, commercial mycorrhizae in sterilized prairie soil, no commercial mycorrhizae in non-sterilized prairie soil, and no commercial mycorrhizae in a sterilized prairie soil. Each treatment group had six replicates to make twenty-four total plants, and then we repeated the experiment for two grass species making forty-eight total plants. We separated the four treatment groups of each species into two groups based on whether or not they were going to receive commercial mycorrhizae or not receive commercial mycorrhizae. Every week we measured the blade width of each grass blade in centimeters for both species using a ruler, and we measured the chlorophyll content of each plant using a SPAD meter. At the end of the experimental period, we harvested the plants and obtained measurements for the above ground and below ground biomass in order to calculate the responsiveness of the mycorrhizae.

Key Results: Both species seemed to benefit more in the sterilized soil. The Elymus canadensis seemed to benefit and grow better than the Bromus inermis in the sterilized soil. We didn’t seem to get as many results from the biomass as we had wanted. As the statistics weren’t significant, we cannot draw any certain conclusions from the biomass.

• Conclusions: From our results, we believe that the sterilized, inoculated (SI) soil benefitted the leaf width more than the other treatments.  Although, we do believe that this could have been random due to the fact that the experiment was very short and so the plants had not had time to fully develop their leaf width. In the results for chlorophyll content, it is shown that there was a slight difference in the sterilized, inoculated (SI) and sterilized, non-inoculated (SN) in the species. The Elymus canadensis appeared to benefit more in the SI while the Bromus inermis appeared to benefit more in the SN. The biomass of both species seemed to benefit more in the sterilized soil, but there was not much difference between the SI and the SN.  The best we can explain this is that while the sterilized subjects did better, there was not enough time to see the full results of the biomass differences in the SI and the SN soil. The results that we obtained were not what we had hoped.  While there were some differences, our thought is that because the experiment was short, the plants did not have enough time to fully develop. Therefore, we could not fully test the effects that the different types of soil and mycorrhizae had on the subjects.