Germed on the wrong seed of the tracks
What is the benefit of using clay to cover the lettuce seeds during pelleting?
To keep the seed cool, dark, and give it consistent moisture.
Plants have vegetative (leaves, stems, etc.) parts and generative parts (fruits, seeds, etc.). What are the general terms for the vegetative and generative parts of fungus?
Mycelia and fruiting bodies
What is the main source of carbon for the plants?
Bonus 100 points: What is the most common product of that carbon acquisition?
Carbon dioxide
Bonus: carbohydrates
The function of Cytokinin?
What is regulating cell division, growth, and differentiation. It promotes bud production.
Pythium and Phytophthora are both oomycetes that cause plant disease. What is it called when they attack germinating seeds?
Bonus 100 points: What famous historical event is phytophthora (partially) responsible for?
Dampening off
Bonus: The Irish Potato Famine (or) Bowery Farms Bankruptcy
When the plant germinates and emerges from the seed coat, what are the first (usually paired) photosynthetic parts of the plant called?
Cotyledons
True or False: The best way to identify fungi visually is to look at the shape and size of the fruiting bodies (the structures that hold the spores).
Bonus 100 points: What is another way to identify fungus.
True, just like looking at macro fungi when foraging for mushrooms in the woods.
Bonus: Various ways to match the DNA to known specimens.
This essential nutrient is used in the plant to create ATP, nucleic acids, and phospholipid compounds, what is it?
Bonus 100 points: Is it mobile or immobile?
Phosphorus, and it is immobile.
This gaseous hormone aids in fruit ripening?
What is Ethylene?
Oomycetes are also called water molds. True or false, they are truly types of mold.
Bonus 100 points: Name the most common type of oomycete that we deal with on a daily basis.
False. Molds are true fungus and oomycetes are not.
Bonus: Pythium
What is the process called when the seed coat is damaged to encourage germination?
scarification
What is the technical term for the broad category of beneficial fungi?
Bonus 200 points: What do the fungi get in return for being beneficial to the plants?
Mycorrhizal fungi or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
Bonus: They provide protection and mineral nutrients to the plant in exchange for sugars.
This mineral micronutrient is involved in the creation and strengthening of cell walls. Without enough of this element, plants can become very brittle, apical meristems can collapse on themselves, and root pith will fail to hold its shape.
Bonus 100 points: Is it mobile or immobile?
Boron and it is immobile
This hormone is responsible for cell elongation, seed dormancy, and flower initiation. In high concentrations, the plant will grow taller.
What is gibberellin?
Oomycetes have a life stage called an oospore. This is like a seed in the fact that it is meant to be very durable and survive different kinds of stress before germinating and growing again. What kinds of abiotic stress could it encounter inside the grow zone?
All the same abiotic stressors that the plants would experience. Heat, drought, oxidation, too much or not enough light, salinity, etc.
Most species of plants have a chemical means of delaying germination until the environment is favorable. In lettuce the hormone with the abbreviation ABA inhibits germination and must be broken down so that another hormone with the abbreviation GA can make germination occur.
Name those hormones.
ABA = abscisic acid
GA = gibberellic acid
Fungi are heterotrophs that cannot convert sunlight into food. Some species can form symbiotic relationships with plants, bugs, and other organisms in exchange for food. What is the general category of fungus that consume dead organic material?
Saprotrophs, or necrotrophs.
This essential element is used by the plant in a wide variety of proteins, ammino acids, etc. It is also essential for the production of glucosinolates in brassicas which give them a distinctive flavor.
Bonus 100 points: Is it mobile or immobile?
Sulfur and it is mobile
This hormone increases when stress factors affect the plant.
What is Abscisic acid?
Oomycetes have a life stage called an oospore. This is like a seed in the fact that it is meant to be very durable and survive different kinds of stress before germinating and growing again. Name two IPM management methods that could be used to prevent oospores from spreading between water systems?
Cultural: cleaning tools and equipment, etc.
Mechanical: filters
Chemical: soaps, sanitizers, etc.
Biological: beneficials that could prey on oomycetes already in the water system.
What is the technical term for the seed coat, aka the cuticle and guard cells that separate the seed embryo from the outside world?
The testa
Mycelia is the vegetative part of the fungus, which is in turn made of lots of little "threads" all connected to each other. What are the "threads" called?
Bonus 400 points: These structures are made of cells. What material makes the cell wall for true fungus and what makes up the cell wall for Oomycetes? Points only if you get both correct.
Hyphae
Bonus: Fungi cell wall are made of chitin and oomycete cell walls are made of cellulose.
These two elements are antagonistic towards each other in the rhizosphere. That means that if the ratio between them is out of balance, the plant would absorb only one of them and leave the other in the rhizosphere. One essential macronutrient is used in creating chlorophyll and the other essential macronutrient is used in making cell walls stronger.
What are the two elements?
Bonus 200 points: Why are they antagonistic?
Double bonus 400 points: What is a good ratio for them in our water systems?
Magnesium and Calcium
Bonus: Because they are atomically similar enough to use the same pathways into the root cells.
Double Bonus: 2.3 ppm Ca for every 1 ppm Mg
What is the function of Auxin?
In high concentrations it inhibits root growth and lateral bud production. It also is the hormone that influences phototropism.
Once the oospore finds a favorable environment, it will germinate and eventually begin to produce mobile spores that use two flagella to swim around to find a new host. What are those free swimming spores called?
Zoospores