Project properties
Title Dangerous liaisons: harnessing disease to increase plant productivity
Group Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group
Project type thesis
Credits 36-39
Supervisor(s) Sofia Gomes and Jose Macia-Vicente
Examiner(s) Prof. Liesje Mommer
Contact info sofia.fernandesgomes@WUR.nl, jose.maciavicente@wur.nl
Begin date 2020/10/01
End date 2021/09/30
Description Soil-borne and root-colonizing fungi are important drivers of plant establishment, survival, and productivity. Their impact in plant development can be either positive (e.g. mycorrhizal fungi) or negative (pathogens), modifying hosts� competitiveness in respect to neighboring plants. Our hypothesis is that the different susceptibility of plant species to specific soil-borne pathogens plays a major role in maintaining plant diversity in natural ecosystems, which could boost plant productivity, since high species richness is frequently associated with increased plant biomass.

The project will focus on the soil-borne fungus Paraphoma chrysanthemicola, a root-colonizing fungus commonly found in roots of asymptomatic plants, which infects and causes disease in leaves of specific plant species, mostly within the family Asteraceae. The goal of this project is to investigate the effect of P. chrysanthemicola in the performance of 16 plant species, representing common grasses and forbs in natural grasslands. Plants can be non-hosts (not colonized), reservoirs (colonized but asymptomatic), or hosts (colonized and symptomatic). To test that, seedlings of all species will be grown in the greenhouse and will be inoculated with P. chrysanthemicola, along with controls where plants will be left uninoculated. Plants will be then assigned to either of the three categories above based on whether they are colonized by the fungus, and whether they express disease symptoms.
Used skills Greenhouse experiment with plants with soil-borne pathogen inoculation
Requirements Affinity with doing experiments