Project Overview
Commodities
- Additional Plants: tea
Practices
- Crop Production: cover crops
- Pest Management: biological control, row covers (for pests), weed ecology
- Soil Management: soil microbiology, soil quality/health
Abstract:
This project is an exploration of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal species associating with tea (Camellia sinensis) roots under various soil, environmental, and management conditions in the United States. Species in the genus Camellia are known to associate with AM fungi in their native and historical ranges, but the community profile of AM fungi on tea roots in the United States has not yet been described (Bag et al., 2020). Given the growing interest in cultivating tea as a specialty crop in the United States, and especially in the Southeast, we are undertaking research to assess AM fungi-tea associations in the United States. This research will describe the AM fungal communities associating with tea in different soil types, environmental conditions, and management conditions. The project addresses these questions with two different approaches: In the first, AM fungal communities are described from across a wide geographical area within Florida and the greater Southeast; in the second, an experimental plot at the University of Florida (UF) Plant Science Research and Education Unit (PSREU) in Citra, FL is used to test AM fungal communities on early-stage establishing tea plants under different cover crop treatments. The results of these efforts will inform management practices for new tea growers in Florida and the Southeast.
Project objectives:
1) Study and characterize AMF communities in association with tea roots in Central Florida, North Florida, and in the Southeast. This objective casts a wide net to capture the diversity of AMF-tea community composition according to geographical occurrence, including considerations of climate, soil physical properties, and local vegetative communities. AMF species and community profiles determined from this objective will inform Objective 2.
2) Evaluate AMF colonization and community profile in association with tea roots under several ground cover strategies for tea farms, including biotic ground cover and WBC. Correlations between AMF and soil physical properties, soil nutrient levels, tea plant health, and product quality metrics will be investigated.
3) Report the results of this research to inform BMPs for ground cover management in tea growing systems. In particular, the work is intended to address issues of cover crop species selection, effect on soil nutrients and soil physical properties. In addition, symbiotic interactions between cover crop, tea plant, and soil fungal communities, will be studied and described with relevance to tea plant health and management recommendations. This objective includes dissemination of findings through webinars, extension outreach, conference presentations, and research publications.