What Lies Beneath…

Any backyard gardener knows that plants are affected by the soil they grow in. But did you know that plants can also change the soil?

Join graduate student Ishwora Dhungana, in the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Science, for the defense of her MS thesis, “Digging Deep at Plant Roots: Rhizospheres as Determinants of Soil Microbial Community Assembly,” on June 30 at 2:00 p.m. Join via Zoom or One Tap Mobile.

The rhizosphere is the area around a plant’s roots, which contains chemicals released from the roots and the microorganisms affected by these chemicals.

Ishwora is studying how different crop species and their root exudates can contribute to and modify microbial communities in the soil. She uses high-throughput sequencing to characterize fungal and bacterial communities under these plants, as well as classical cultural methods to test how the quality of rhizosphere exudates influences bacterial growth.

Mark your calendars and find out more about the power of plants!