Mycorrhizae Essay

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This experiment was to see the effect of the fungus, a naturally occurring material in soil, and its mutualistic relationship with plants. In particular, the fungus mycorrhizae on dwarf little marble peas was studied along with the effects molasses had on the fungus. It was predicted that the plants with the mycorrhizae and the fungus would produce better results in growth, weight, and number of fruits/pods. The results showed this hypothesis to be true from the data: the plant with mycorrhizae and molasses had a greater length, beared more fruit/pods, weighed more, and had a shorter internode length than any of the others.

Introduction:
Imagine all the nutrients, like nitrogen, potassium, phosphate, water, and minerals, that are in regular soil; some put there by decomposing plants or animals and others by rain, fungi, and organic wastes. A good question to ask is how does this type of soil help a plant flourish and grown to its best potential? Since plants are made up of a root system, which are responsible for anchoring the plant and water and nutrient uptake, it is good to take a look at the kinds of nutrients that the plant will be up taking. One of focus is fungi, which is engrained in the soil. The fungus attaches to the plant root to sometimes help with nutrient intake, but also at times, can hinder the plant by absorbing its resources.
Mycorrhizae are a type of fungus that helps the plant’s productivity by absorbing more nutrients, help it grow, and improve on the root system (Fan et al 2011). It also helps the plant take up nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, help against the effects of water scarcity, and increase the health of the plant by protecting it from diseases and insects (Saia et al 2014). The mycorrh...

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...f the plants grew. The raw data, containing a total of fifteen plants, showed the live mycorrhizae with the molasses grew more and in full than the other plants. The killed mycorrhizae with molasses cups and some of the killed mycorrhizae with no molasses cups contained plants that did not sprout. These plants might not have grown either because the seeds were ineffective or the plants were not watered enough; the mycorrhizae with molasses would survive with this because the fungus is able to reduce the water stress (Saia et al 2014).
An improvement on this experiment could have been the watering; instead of twice a week, it could’ve been everyday and a consistent amount of water—maybe a set of up of sprinklers instead of hand watering the plants. Another improvement could have been a weed type plant guaranteed to grow, in order to better measure and collect results.

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