Research enhances understanding of switchgrass, an important bioenergy crop
2021-07-06
(Press-News.org) Bioenergy crops are an alternative energy source that, unlike fossil fuels, could positively impact the environment by reducing greenhouse gases, soil erosion, and carbon dioxide levels. They can be produced even more sustainably if they are grown on poor quality land unsuitable for food. To make up for the poor land quality, these crops can rely on soil microbes like bacteria and fungi to help them access nutrients and water and store more carbon.
Switchgrass, a native prairie species, is championed as a promising bioenergy crop due to its ability to grow across many climates. It is also known to associate with beneficial microbes. To better understand the relationship between switchgrass and soil microbes, researchers at Michigan State University and Washington State University examined soil microbial communities and root traits among 12 switchgrass cultivars that had been planted in the same plot over nine years.
"This common garden design allowed us to determine how each cultivar affects their soil microbiome while controlling for difference in soil type and climate," explained Tayler Ulbrich, one of the researchers involved in the study. And unlike most studies that look at young switchgrass roots, their focus on a wide range of different cultivars and on mature switchgrass gave them a more representative understanding of the plant's long-life span and dense root systems.
"We learned that, even within one region, there is not one standard switchgrass microbiome but that each cultivar harbored a unique community of soil bacteria and fungi. We also found evidence that root characteristics, like length and diameter, differed among the cultivars and may influence the structure of these microbiomes."
Their study emphasizes the need to identify how plant traits affect soil microbiomes and their function. Ulbrich acknowledges that studying root traits is a tedious task, especially on plants growing in nature, but it is important to research because root systems are crucial for resource uptake and healthy soils as well as the plant's ability to communicate with other plants and microbes.
Producing profitable and sustainable bioenergy crops will require crops that can tolerate stressful growing conditions, such as poor soil nutrients or drought, with fewer inputs. Understanding that switchgrass cultivars differ in their abilities to tolerate these conditions and that microbiomes may play a role, future research should investigate cultivar-specific differences in microbiomes and use this information to select and breed cultivars with optimal microbiome-mediated traits such as high nitrogen-fixation or carbon-sequestration.
For more information about this research, read "Intraspecific Variability in Root Traits and Edaphic Conditions Influence Soil Microbiomes Across 12 Switchgrass Cultivars," published in the May issue of Phytobiomes Journal, which focuses on the phytobiomes of bioenergy crops and agroecosystems.
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-06
BUFFALO, N.Y. - How the media frame stories about science affects the public's perception about scientific accuracy and reliability, and one particular type of narrative can help ameliorate the harm to science's reputation sometimes caused by different journalistic approaches to scientific storytelling, according to a new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher.
"What our experiment shows is that the way the news media talk about science focuses too much attention on individuals in a way that doesn't accurately describe the way science actually works," says ...
2021-07-06
Amid calls for racial and social justice nationwide, businesses and educational institutions are grappling with how to adopt more inclusive organizational practices, including more diversified hiring. However, recruitment teams and strategic leaders often blame their lack of a diverse workforce on a lack of diverse applicants. A large study of recruitment data suggests a simple and efficient way of increasing diversity in applicant pools: have more diverse recruitment committees and leadership teams.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Houston's Center for ADVANCING ...
2021-07-06
Findings from a study published today [6 July] in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) have prompted new World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations to use interleukin-6 antagonists in patients with severe or critical COVID-19 along with corticosteroids.
A new analysis of 27 randomised trials involving nearly 11,000 patients found that treating hospitalised COVID-19 patients with drugs that block the effects of interleukin-6 (the interleukin-6 antagonists tocilizumab and sarilumab) reduces the risk of death and the need for mechanical ventilation.
The study, which was coordinated by WHO in partnership with King's College London, University of Bristol, University ...
2021-07-06
ITHACA, N.Y. - As offices nationwide spring back to life, interior space designers and architects will soon have an easy-to-use planning tool to place indoor workplace furniture, staff, partitions and ventilation in a manner that maximizes fresh air flow and reduces the risk of airborne pathogens.
The Cornell Environmental Systems Lab in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning will introduce a new indoor module for their existing Eddy3D software, a professional-level airflow and microclimate simulator that can help improve ventilation.
The new indoor module will be released this summer, while the research supporting it will ...
2021-07-06
Scientists and engineers are constantly looking for ways to better our world.
Synthetic biology is an emerging field with promise for improving our ability to manufacture chemicals, develop therapeutic medicines such as biopharmaceuticals and vaccines, and enhance agricultural production, among other things. It relies on taking natural or engineered pieces of DNA and combining them in new ways in biological systems, such as microbes, bacteria or other organisms.
According to University of Delaware's Aditya Kunjapur, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, as these sophisticated microbial technologies are advanced, scientists need to explore ways to keep these organisms from ending up in the wrong environment.
For example, a bacterium that is good at making ...
2021-07-06
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- What if the COVID-19 virus could be used against itself? Researchers at Penn State have designed a proof-of-concept therapeutic that may be able to do just that. The team designed a synthetic defective SARS-CoV-2 virus that is innocuous but interferes with the real virus's growth, potentially causing the extinction of both the disease-causing virus and the synthetic virus.
"In our experiments, we show that the wild-type [disease-causing] SARS-CoV-2 virus actually enables the replication and spread of our synthetic virus, thereby effectively promoting its own decline," said Marco Archetti, associate professor of biology, Penn State. "A version of this synthetic construct could be used as a self-promoting ...
2021-07-06
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The fast-moving decline and extinction of many species of detritivores -- organisms that break down and remove dead plant and animal matter -- may have dire consequences, an international team of scientists suggests in a new study.
The researchers observed a close relationship between detritivore diversity and plant litter decomposition in streams, noting that decomposition was highest in waters with the most species of detritivores -- including aquatic insects such as stoneflies, caddisflies, mayflies and craneflies, and crustaceans such as scuds and freshwater shrimp and crabs.
Decomposition ...
2021-07-06
ABINGTON, Pa. -- Counterfeit dominance decreases Anglo-American, but not Asian, consumers' quality perception and purchase intention of authentic brands, according to a team of researchers.
"Counterfeit dominance is the perception that counterfeit products possess more than 50% of market share," Lei Song, assistant professor of marketing at Penn State Abington, said. "Counterfeit dominance is a phenomenon especially concerning for the luxury fashion industry as counterfeit luxury fashion brands account for 60% to 70% of the $4.5 trillion in total counterfeit trade and one-quarter of total sales in luxury fashion goods."
Lei and his team conducted four behavioral experiments with 149 participants on ...
2021-07-06
Increased labour mobility seems to have stopped the racial wage discrimination of black English football players. A new study in economics from Stockholm university and Université Paris-Saclay used data from the English Premier League to investigate the impact of the so-called "Bosman ruling", and found that racial discrimination against English football players disappeared - but not for non-EU players. The study was recently published in the journal European Economic Review.
In 1995, the so-called Bosman ruling turned the labour market for European footballers upside down, introducing a free transfer ...
2021-07-06
Necessity is the father of invention, but where is its mother? According to a new study published in Science, fewer women hold biomedical patents, leading to a reduced number of patented technologies designed to address problems affecting women.
While there are well-known biases that limit the number of women in science and technology, the consequences extend beyond the gender gap in the labour market, say researchers from McGill University, Harvard Business School, and the Universidad de Navarra in Barcelona. Demographic inequities in who gets to invent lead to demographic inequities in who benefits from invention.
"Although the percentage of biomedical patents held by women has risen from 6.3% to 16.2% over the last three decades, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Research enhances understanding of switchgrass, an important bioenergy crop