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Q&A ViewAttendees 7

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Undergrad P-IE: Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Plant-soil feedback's effect on nutrition and insect herbivory in tomatoes

Monday, November 1, 2021
9:12 AM - 9:24 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 111-113
In-Person Student Competition
Cover crops are often used in agricultural systems to add nitrogen to the soil. Cover crops provide plant-soil feedback that influence soil microbes and plant defenses, while nitrogen influences plant development and insect herbivory. The plant vigor hypothesis suggests that insects feed more on vigorously growing plants. We compared the use of cover crop mixtures to synthetic fertilizer on the effects of plant nutrition in tomatoes (L. esculentum cv. Bonnie’s Best) as well as insect herbivory in Manduca sexta. The cover crop treatments consisted of 100% spring oats Avena sativa, 100% crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum), or 50%/50% mix of A. sativa and T. incartnum and were compared to synthetic fertilizer concentrations that matched tissue samples of each cover crop treatment. I predicted M. sexta larvae would grow larger and do more damage to tomatoes with higher nitrogen concentrations, but tomatoes grown in high N cover crop soils will have less damage than tomatoes fertilized with inorganic sources of N. My results provide insight on plant-soil feedback on agricultural systems and how nitrogen from cover crops can support vigorous plants without leading to increased herbivore performance.