Mycorrhizae Effects Measured by Plant Growth and Plant Stress in Sorghum Bicolor and Sorghastrum Nutans

Abstract

Plants provide us with many essentials to life and because of that it has become important that we find ways to improve agricultural production. One way has been experimented on plant growth and the symbiotic relationship between arbuscular mycorrhizae and plants. Using the experimental plan we wanted to determine how the inoculation of arbuscular mycorrhizae effects the growth rate and stress levels of Sorghum bicolor and Sorghastrum nutans when in the presence of wild mycorrhizae. Our hypotheses were that plant growth would be the highest in the presence of both live and commercial mycorrhizae and the presence of mycorrhizae would lower chlorophyll content due to the expectation that the stress level on the plant would be lowered by the mycorrhizae. Measurements of stem height (cm) and chlorophyll content were recorded weekly for three weeks using a ruler and SPAD meter of 48 pots of Sorghum bicolor and Sorghastrum nutans, which were separated into four categories. The categories being live-inoculated, live-non inoculated, sterile-inoculated, and sterile-non inoculated. Calculations of growth rate were done by taking the difference of the first and third weeks, dividing by the third week, multiplying by 100, and dividing by the total number of weeks. The interactions between the soil and inoculum treatment produced insignificant results for each plant trait measured. Our data collected did not support either of our hypotheses. For stem height the results were opposite of what was predicted and there was no clear interpretation of the effect of mycorrhizae on chlorophyll per treatment.