The role of barley root fungal endophytes in improving the utilization of organic soil nutrients.
Supervisors:
Timothy S George, Ecological Sciences Department, The James Hutton Institute
Carmen Escudero Martinez, The James Hutton Institute
TBC
TBC
The applicant will be based at Strathclyde University
Summary:
Plants can enhance interactions with soil in several fundamental ways. Specifically, by extending their relative root surface area by producing lateral roots and root hairs and through interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) (Wang et al. 2022). Alternatively, roots can alter the rhizosphere soil biochemical environment, release unavailable nutrients and recruit a beneficial rhizosphere microbiome (Hallett et al. 2022). The impact of fungal endophytes that are found in plants is not well understood and nothing is known about the role they play in the recruitment of beneficial microbiomes.
This project aims to understand the trade-offs between fungal endophytes, mycorrhizae and the rhizosphere microbiome with respect to the ability of crop plants to utilize organic nutrients from soil. You will assimilate wide-ranging skills, analytical techniques and concepts from a breadth of research fields (root biology, microbiology, bioinformatics, nutrient dynamics). This combination will equip you with unique expertise in an emerging area of plant sciences (microbiology and nutrient dynmaics at the root-soil interface) that will be important to plant breeding companies.