Summer 2011 Research

"Diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in conventionally and organically grown coffee "

Dr. Laura Aldrich-Wolfe

Fungicide use in conventionally-grown coffee greatly restricts the abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, the beneficial fungi that help plants to acquire nutrients and resist parasitism and disease.  However, little is known about the effects of chronic fungicide use on diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.  We will spend two weeks in Costa Rica taking soil samples in coffee fields with a history of high fungicide use and fields of coffee that have been grown organically. Back at Concordia, we will extract spores from the soil samples and begin to characterize the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in these fields using both traditional microscopic approaches to identification and molecular identification by DNA extraction and amplification of fungal genes using PCR.


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