How the global distribution of vegetation stands dominated by arbuscular and ectomycorrhizal plants relate to principle aspects of belowground carbon accumulation processes?

How presence, abundance and enzymatic activities of AM and EM fungi differently affect soil carbon sequestration processes?

How soil microbial composition impacts structure and composition of the aboveground plant and animal communities?

Lecture

What are the global relationships between environmental conditions and abundance of distinct types of mycorrhizal fungi in soil and plant roots?

Great efforts are made to describe carbon cycling in view of climate change and CO2 emission. Thanks to plants and fungi working together belowground - a combination known as mycorrhiza - large quantities of carbon are stored in soils. But until now, this process has been neglected in these calculations.…

On 19 April, CML researcher Nadia Soudzilovskaia gave an invited talk at The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) about her VIDI-funded work on impacts of mycorrhizas on ecosystem functioning. During this project she will closely collaborate with GBIF colleagues.

Leiden researchers have compiled information collected by scientists over the past 120 years into a database of plant-fungal interactions. This important biological data is now freely available for researchers and nature conservationists. Publication in New Phytologist.

Hearing the word ‘cheating’, people are most likely to think about human or animal behaviour. But did you know plants can cheat too? Microbiologist Sofia Fernandes Gomes studied plants that deceive the fungi with whom they live together. In the future, these plants may act as indicator species for soil…

On 11 May 2016 a prestigious NWO Vidi grant (NWO's Innovation Research Incentives scheme) has been awarded to Nadia Soudzilovskaia for her research proposal entitled “Do mycorrhizal fungi mediate soil carbon fate?”, aimed to understand mycorrhizal impact on soil carbon sequestration.

Plants love favourable microbes such as bacteria and fungi: they grow better and become healthier. Jos Raaijmakers, Professor of Microbial Ecology, is in search of the right microbes to be used in agriculture. Inaugural lecture 13 November.

A special relationship between plants and fungi, which plays an important role in carbon storage in soil, has the potential to slow down climate change. However, the amount of carbon stored in soil is decreasing as a result of human activity. This is what researchers say in a publication in Nature Communications.…

Lecture

Lecture