The impact of pesticides on bacterial biodiversity in the turfgrass rhizosphere
Emma Buczkowsi: University of Wisconsin
<div>Pesticides are routinely applied to turfgrass landscapes to manage weed, insect, and disease pests. Understanding the impact of various pesticides on the turf-associated microbiome may have important implications for developing more sustainable pest management strategies. To evaluate how pesticides influence soil bacterial biodiversity, turfgrass plots at the OJ Noer Turfgrass Research Station in Madison, WI were treated with a single herbicide, insecticide, or fungicide application in June of 2017. The pesticides applied represented either a low or high toxicity product based on its mammalian acute oral LD50 assessment. Soil cores were removed at 0, 1, 3, 7, 14, and 21 days after application and frozen at -80<sup>o</sup> C until further processing. The entire project was repeated in August 2017. Rhizosphere soil was removed, DNA was extracted, and the V4 16S rRNA region was amplified. Polymerase chain reaction products were pooled and sequenced using the Illumina MiSeq platform and raw sequencing data was processed using Mothur. As of this submission the final sequencing results have not been analyzed, but based on previous research in other systems we hypothesize that the microbial communities will initially undergo a structural change and over time return to a community of similar structure and diversity as prior to the pesticide application.</div>
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