A 3-Year Study Reveals That Plant Growth Stage, Season and Field Site Affect Soil Fungal Communities while Cultivar and GM-Trait Have Minor Effects
Figure 1
Boxplots of fungal biomass in the rhizosphere as measured by ergosterol concentrations during 3 years in different growth stages and in both field locations. The baseline (all other cultivars combined, n = 16) is marked with green boxplots, the GM-variety (n = 4) with purple and the parental variety ‘Karnico’ (n = 4) with blue markers. The star indicates a significant cultivar effect at the indicated time point. The values under the graphs are the cultivars with highest and lowest values (on average) colored the same as in the boxplots where ‘D’ = ‘Désirée’, ‘Avk’ = ’Aveka’, ‘Avn’ = ’Aventra’, ‘P’ = ‘Premiere’, ‘K’ = ‘Karnico’ (parental cultivar) and ‘M’ = ’Modena’ (modified cultivar).