The David Miller Travel Bursary Award aims to give early career plant scientists or horticulturists the opportunity of travel in connection with their horticultural careers. Hazel Marsden was awarded one of the 2024 David Miller Travel Bursaries to attend the 12th International Conference on Mycorrhiza in Manchester.
"My PhD project involves investigating the interactions of soft fruit plants, the oomycete pathogens Phytophthora rubi and P. fragariae and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). AMF are slow-growing fungi which can only grow in association with plant roots. As such, they are difficult to work with and are not widely researched, despite being ubiquitous in the natural environment and occurring in association with over 70% of land plants. AMF were the major fungal group discussed at the conference, as well as ectomycorrhizas and some even less well understood groups.
"Although I had attended some smaller specialist conferences before, this was my first experience of a major international conference. I was not prepared for the number of people, the wide variety of topics and the sheer size of the talks and workshop board. The subjects covered a huge range of mycorrhiza-related topics, from the role of Australian marsupials in truffle distribution to transcriptomics of AMF; it was often hard to choose which session to attend.
"Probably the most useful session for me was a discussion session about molecular ecology of arbuscular mycorrhizas, and the current status of AMF metabarcoding. AMF are notoriously difficult to detect and identify using the ITS region which is commonly used for fungus identification. This has led to many different options and multiple databases, all with their own positives and negatives. I am shortly to attempt rhizosphere sampling of raspberries with a focus on AMF for the first time, so this was very timely and informative. This discussion session confirmed that there is still no real consensus on the optimal region to use, due largely to the rapid developments in the sector, but the opportunity to go through the options, pros and cons with such a group of experts was extremely useful. Getting the confirmation that there is no agreed solution to the issue that I had missed was also very reassuring.
"At the conference, I was able to present a poster showcasing one of the ongoing experiments of my PhD project, investigating zoospore chemotaxis. This led to several interesting discussions with a variety of researchers, with a few suggestions and questions I had not considered previously.
"Other highlights were meeting researchers also studying my extremely niche topic area of mycorrhiza-phytophthora interactions; with only a handful of people investigating interactions of this combination of organisms globally, I have not met any others in person before.
"The conference dinner was also a great experience, with so many people joining the ceilidh dancing, it was hard to get enough space to move! Overall, the ICOM12 conference was a fantastic opportunity to meet lots of new people, catch up with a few I had met previously, and enabled me to make both international and UK-based contacts, including a few people I can’t believe I missed until now. It allowed me to meet possible future collaborators and also discuss the problems of working with such an uncooperative group of fungi with some fellow PhD student peers over a beer."
Hazel Marsden
PhD Student
University of Warwick
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