IECB Project
Title
Soil carbon assimilation of plants
project funding
duration
higher studies jubilee fond of the city of Vienna, Austria, scheduled for one year (2002-2003)
Project co-ordinator*
research team
Gert Bachmann*, Manfred Wurzer, Wolfgang Postl
Main hypothesis
Some plants may, in addition to photosynthesis, be able to assimilate appreciable amounts of soil carbon via the
root system depending on ambient water and light conditions.
Objectives
1. To assess relevance of soil carbon assimilation of some economically important plants
2. To find out how this kind of c-assimilation depends on light availability and soil humidity
3. To test whether some sugar or amino acids exuding plants may be used as green manure for plants that can
take up carbon from soil
Methodology
Selected plant species will be cultivated in hydroponics culture and in soil, too. After an initial phase of some
days to allow for the compensation of plantation stress, growth analysis will be carried out and defined amounts
of 13C labelled glucose and sucrose will be added to the irrigation water of the plant containers.
After an appropriate time of cultivation under varying controlled climatic conditions, an other
growth analysis will be performed. Changes of photosynthetic efficiency will be measured by means of IRGA, a
total carbon, nitrogen, 13C and 15N analysis of all plant organs and the soils will be done with a Massspec
(DeltaPlus Finnigan MAT). This tracing of carbon uptake will be supported by soil respiration analysis (to assess
the loss of carbon via the atmosphere) along with other soil biological techniques like the BIOLOG substrate
usage test.
project outputs
in preparation
opportunities for students
t
there is work for one more master student
links to other research groups
as this is a pilote project, cooperations will follow later, but we appreciate comments, especially
where mechanisms for the uptake of low molekular organic substances are concerned