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Presentation award for Paula Harkes
Paula Harkes has got a presentation award at the Netherlands Annual Ecology Meeting (NAEM) for her presentation "Fine-mapping rhizosphere communities: opening Pandora’s black box?"
Abstract:
The most intensive interactions between microbes and plants take place at the rhizosphere, which is the interface between plant roots and their surrounding soil. Understanding the functioning of the rhizobiome in its full complexity requires powerful tools to map the inhabitants of this community. Combining the DNA and RNA profile can provide useful information about stimulated fractions within your population at the instant of measuring, resulting in an improved interpretation of ecosystem functioning. Here we monitored the bacterial, fungal, protists and nematode community in the rhizosphere of barley under three distinct soil management regimes, for two developmental stages of the crop, in two different locations. Total DNA and RNA was isolated (in-house protocol) from rhizosphere samples - 104 rhizosphere samples, for each sample DNA and cDNA was analysed separately. First of all, very significant difference was seen at the active (cDNA) and resident community (DNA). Also a location effects was observed for all four organismal groups. Superposed on the location effects, clear effects of organic, integrated and conventional could be pinpointed. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time four mayor key organismal groups players of the soil food web are simultaneously mapped in order to obtain insight in the effects of soil management practices.