Most plants on land associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (subphylum: Glomeromycotina). These fungi can provide plants with access to important resources (i.e. phosphorus) while the plants provide the fungi with carbon. In both natural and managed ecosystems, plants are attacked by at least one, if not many, insect herbivores. For crop production, this can mean significant impacts on yield.
The prophylactic application and reliance on many pesticides and fertilisers is unsustainable. As crop production must increase its sustainability the symbiosis between AM fungi and crop plants offers vast potential to increase plant growth, nutreint uptake and resistance to pests. This project will investigate how AM fungal community assemblage relates to plant defences against insect herbivores.
This project will incorporate field-based (soil and root sampling), controlled-environment experimentation (glasshouse experiments) and lab-based analyses (amplicon sequencing) to disentangle how different AM fungi impact the defences of important Australian crop species.

Dr Adam Frew

• Centre for Crop Health

• Crop and Pasture Production
• Ecology
• Plant Biology

• Doctor of Philosophy (DPHD)