Forestry
Mycorrhizal Fungal Ecology- A Genomic Approach for Improved Forest Management
SOF103- Project Leaders: Suzanne Simard, Richard Hamelin
- Institutions: University of British Columbia (UBC)
- Budget: $80265
- Program/Competition: Science Opportunities Fund
- Genome Centre(s): Genome British Columbia
- Status: Closed
This smaller-scale project team investigated the symbiotic association between fungus and plant roots with a view to improve the establishment of cedar and hemlock seedlings during forest regeneration.
This project discovered mycorrhizal host class and inoculum potential differences in two ecosystems, which is critical to understand why cedar has had difficulty generating on sites previously occupied by old-grown hemlock, and vise versa. The results were anticipated to impact forest establishment, productivity and stand management.
In October 2011, 6154 DNA sequences of the Internal Transcribed Spacer region of fungal DNA and 200 DNA barcodes of identified mycorrhizal fungal specimens from the Pacific Forestry Centre Herbarium were deposited to GenBank®, the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.
