MIP update and Why Corn?

A lot has happened over the last month, including significant growth of our corn seedlings for our mychorrizal infection potential experiment.

Our MIP corn has grown significantly larger since last post.

As you can see, the corn looks pretty sad though (excuse the anthropomorphism). The stalks and leaves are streaked with a very vibrant purple.

Isn't that purple almost fuchsia?

The purple is because the soils that we are testing [apparently] have very little phosphorus. While not much is known about phosphorus in the life cycle, plants do need small amounts to grow healthily.

Question: why are we using corn in our experiment? 

Through this MIP, we hope to quantify how much arbuscular fungi is present in the different soil types. We can only find out by seeing how many symbiotic relationships the fungi form with the plant roots in the soil. Corn is perfect for this because it is a great host for these mycorrhizal relationships. Corn roots are so happy for the fungi that if there is any fungus in the sample, the corn roots with make relationships with it.
This comes back to why the corn is purple. In the relationship between fungus and plant root, the plant gives up carbohydrates and sugars in exchange for nutrients such as phosphorous.

MIP hypothesis

Two [technically three] possibilities come to mind.

1. There is no phosphorus in the soil samples
2. There is no fungus to help the corn get the phosphorus
3. There is no phosphorus and there is no fungus

We shall conclude the MIP experiment soon and maybe find out what's really going on around here.

Also, say goodbye to the corn, because we are harvesting the MIP tomorrow. A.k.a., cutting the corn stalks at their bases and separating the roots from the soil.