An experimental setup to investigate the effect of mycorrhizal fungi inoculation on plant water uptake in unsaturated soils

Eve Roberts-Self*, Alessandro Tarantino

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

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Abstract

The use of vegetation as a Nature Based Solution, NBS, is increasingly being used for climate adaptation and resilience for engineered and natural slopes. As such it is important to understand the biological processes associated with vegetation and how they could be beneficially implemented. Due to the large repetition required when experimenting with biological components it is impossible to carry out experiments that are highly instrumented. This paper looks at mycorrhizal fungi as a method to improve plant water uptake and presents an experimental setup to allow for a low level of instrumentation in triplicate, with a few being well instrumented. Through benchmarking against TDR-probes, it was found that the method of monitoring soil water content changes in a mini-lysimeter with a loadcell provides a reliable and convenient approach to carry out experiments in three replicates at least.

Original languageEnglish
Article number20004
Number of pages6
JournalE3S Web of Conferences
Volume382
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Apr 2023
Event8th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils, UNSAT 2023 - Milos, Greece
Duration: 2 May 20235 May 2023

Keywords

  • nature based solutions
  • cilmate adaption
  • mycorrhizal fungi
  • plant water uptake

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