The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning/McGill University

Published purpose

Field pea seeds are routinely inoculated with commercially manufactured microorganism (Rhizobium leguminosarum) inoculants prior to sowing; but the treatment often fails to produce the desired increases of nodule activity. This situation seems to be largely explained by the inoculated microbes’ low fitness in the rhizosphere/rhizoplane of young pea plants. The team aims to identify and culture naturally occurring soil microbes that promote the latter parameter. A student or post-doctoral fellow the Laboratory at McGill University to perform some of the project activities (soil and seed inoculations, plant growth assessment, soil sampling and processing for DNA sequencing, production of cell extracts, qPCR analyses, microbial culturing, data analysis). This work aims to: 1-grow inoculated pea with different ‘receiving’ soil microbial communities, 2-determine if differences in nodulation efficiency are observed, 3-identify and culture microbes that may have caused observed differences. If successfully cultured, the latter microbes could be used to enhance the efficiency of currently commercialized field pea microbial inoculants.