The Effect of Commercial Mycorrhizal Fungi on Warm-Season Grasses

Abstract

Vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza is the symbiotic relationship between the root systems of plants and a fungi that aids in nutrient intake. Fungi colonizes directly in the root system and maximizes surface area to aid the plant in nutrient uptake while also providing nutrients for the fungi (Pace, 2013). There have been many studies published in scientific literature that support the theory that adding mycorrhizal fungi to a soil substrate significantly increases average plant growth in nutrient-poor soils, a practice that has been beneficial to agricultural lands.

In our experiment, we used arbuscular mycorrhizae species to test the effects of commercial mycorrhizal inoculum on plant biomass and compared it with wild prairie mycorrhizae. The plants being tested were classified as C4 Grasses (warm-season), which consists of Bothriochloa ischaemum and Andropogon gerardii, both coming from the same seed source in Healy, Kansas. We hypothesized that the plants in our experiment would have the greatest increase in plant biomass, stem size, and height of the grass when grown in soil with both the commercial mycorrhizal inoculum and the wild prairie mycorrhizae.

Our research neither confirmed nor denied our hypothesis due to a lack of statistically significant results but it did suggest there wasn’t a symbiotic relationship between the wild prairie mycorrhizal fungi present in the live soil and the species of grasses we tested. Further research can be done to improve upon our methods and to understand the complex relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and plants.