Effects of Resource Quality and Availability on Soil Microorganisms and their Carbon Assimilation
- Status
- current
- Project begin
- 01.03.2009
- Project end
- 29.02.2012
- Sponsor mark
- DFG KA 1419
Description
This project is part of the Forschergruppe "Carbon flow in belowground food webs assessed by isotope tracers".
The present project aims to elucidate and quantify the carbon flow from both rhizodeposition and straw residues of maize through the bacterial and fungal community. The natural abundance of photosynthetically fixed carbon will be followed into the microbial community (13C-PLFA, 13C-ergosterol and 13Cmic) during three different stages of plant growth using either predominant rhizosphere (fodder maize) or additional litter (corn maize) derived C. Our data will be connected with other groups of this project to link microbial and faunal food webs. We will also clarify microbial food web links in the detritusphere using highly 13C-labelled labile and recalcitrant substrates in a lab experiment to simulate differences in quality and availability of resources.