Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Biochemistry (not Cell and Molecular Biology and Genetics)
Session: 4
Room: Exhibit Hall A
Paula Sanchez-Garzon - Valencia College
It is important to identify biological processes that help plants take-up nutrients. When a plant is submitted to synthetic fertilizer, several components that do not belong to a plant are being used to treat plants in general. Mycorrhizae are fungi that play an important role on both water and nutrient uptake. Their ability to increase water nutrient uptakes inspired a research project that consisted on inoculating pepper plants with Mycorrhizae and comparing the overall growth and yield to a non-inoculated group. The inoculating group will also receive organic fertilizer with Mycorrhizae while the non-inoculating group will receive organic fertilizer without Mycorrhizae. The following parameters will be measured; length and width, fruit characteristics including color, shape, and taste. The setting were two boxes with organic fertilizer one of them including Mycorrhizae applying 5 gallons of fertilizer with water to 10 peppers every day. The hypothesis is that the inoculated peppers will grow better with Mycorrhizae compared with the non-inoculating group. The results showed that the effect of Mycorrhizae positively affected the growing process of bell peppers with Mycorrhizae since they were the longest compared to organic determining color and taste. Bacteria plant growing method caused a more productive fertilization for both the bell peppers and the soil used for the experiment.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): LSAMP; Valencia College
Faculty Advisor: Javier Garces, jgarces3@valenciacolleg.edu
Role: All the research was made by me, Paula Sanchez Garzon, including, introduction, hypothesis, methods, and results.