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Prof. Dr. Cheng Gao
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Fungi, Drought, Sorghum
Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a grass closely related to sugarcane (Saccharum) and corn (Zea mays). It is the fifth most important cereal crop globally; its use is increasing due to its ability to resist drought. We are studying the role that fungi play in sorghum’s drought resistance and initiated our studies with the obligately mutualistic mycorrhizal fungi found in sorghum roots, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AM fungi). |
Fungi, forest, model
From a subtropical forest, we had investigated soil and root-associated fungi, finding that (i) host plant diversity at the genus level was the best predictor of EM fungal diversity (Gao et al. Mol Ecol 2013, 22: 3403–3414), (ii) the driver of EM fungal community assembly changed from young forests to old forests (Gao et al. New Phytol 2015, 205: 771–785) and, (iii), the relationship between plant communities and soil fungal functional guilds differs between ridge and valley habitats (Gao et al. New Phytol 2017, 213: 1874–1885). |