Plant health and growth is tied to the communications that occur under the soil with the microbial community that makes up the rhizosphere, a thin film around the roots of each plant. The plant provides nutrients to attract microbes and sends out enzymes and chemicals to fight off pathogens. To now, understanding the communications between plants and microbes in the soil has required removing the rhizosphere and analyzing it in the laboratory. The goal of this project is to create sensors that can exist in the soil near the rhizosphere to detect the communicating molecules as they are produced and to track how these communications change with changing conditions of the plant.
Duration: 2021-06-26
Principal Investigator(s): Larry Halverson, George Kraus, Pranav Shrotriya, Olga Zabotina