Fungal diversity in plant roots and their rhizospheres

Our goal was to describe and compare the root fungal (especially arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, AMF) communities in different grassland plant species. For that, eight plant species were grown in replicates of five under two different conditions in a glasshouse setting. These two experiments (E1 and E2) were conducted in different years, and using different soil mixtures. The soil used in the experiments was collected from a former pasture in New Zealand in two consecutive years. We tested how the changes in growth conditions affected the plants' root AMF communities. Furthermore, in experiment E2 we examined how rhizosphere AMF communities are changed by their respective host plant by comparing these AMF communities to those from plan-free control soils.