Postdoc - Cornell University
Funded by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, this project focused on the potential of root-associated microbiome breeding to influence Brassica rapa biomass in salt-amended and untreated soils. The Kao-Kniffin lab previously showed that this approach was able to both reduce and lengthen the time to flowering in Arabidopsis [1]. If B. rapa is more dependent on associated microbes in the presence of salt, we should expect to see larger shifts in biomass between treatments and controls than in untreated soils. We are also sequencing the root-associated microbiomes from each generation to look for links between microbiome composition and B. rapa growth. A second goal of this project is to determine how adaptation to salt impacts our ability to transfer microbiomes to non-sterile soils. This aim is ongoing. 1 - Panke-Buisse et al. 2015. The ISME Journal 9: 980-989. |
Large visual differences in colonies captured on six media types from an initial farm soil (top) and from that same soil after four generations of selection in the presence of salt and Brassica rapa growth (bottom). We are currently testing selected microbiomes for scalability through bulk culturing methods. (Photo credit: Sarah Ditton)
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