Assessment of Microbes for Improving Wild Rice Restoration

Wild rice (Zizania palustris) is an ecologically and culturally important plant in Minnesota. Wild rice was historically abundant in northern Minnesota, but its abundance and distribution has been reduced due to environmental contaminants, habitat descruction, physical disturbance, and competitive or invasive plant species. Microbes are the primary meediators of plant growth, adaptation, and competitive success; plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere are directly associated with nutrient uptake and disease/stress tolerance. The overall goal of this project is to improve restoration activities through examining microbial (both fungal and bacterial) communities and nutrients of the rhizosphere of wild rice and competitive plants in well-established wild rice wetlands as well as pre-restoration and post-restoration sites. Sediment, surface water, rhizosphere, and root samples were taken over three successive growing seasons from 2017 to 2019. Extracted DNA was sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq platform (300PE) targeting the V3V4 region of 16S rRNA and ITS1.