DEVELOPING BELOWGROUND PLANT-FUNGAL NETWORKS TO UNDERSTAND SOYBEAN PRODUCTIVITY AND YIELD IN A CHANGING WORLD

This project will investigate how belowground interaction networks between plants and fungal symbionts affect host productivity and yield. Our research will focus on understanding how the sustainable agriculture practice of cover cropping changes plant-fungal interactions to ultimately affect productivity in soybean. Implications will inform general implementation of multiple mutualist effects as a sustainable agricultural technique for increased yield.Specifically the goalis to understand how cover crop-fungal networks influence the mutualistic interactions within soybean and whether these relationships are sensitive to anthropogenically elevated CO2. The proposed study objectives are to: Test if mutualistic networks within cover crops mediate fungal partnerships, productivity, and yield in soybeanInvestigate how network connectance between AMF and cover crop species affects root colonization and productivity by creating synthetic networks in the laboratoryTest network responses to elevated CO2 within field realistic settings