Pueraria

Pueraria phaseoloides, which is also known by the names, Puero (Australia), tropical kudzu (most of the tropics), centro grande and feuille, is a cover crop that grows profusely in wet land soils and nodulates freely in water-available conditions. One of the unique features of Pueraria phaseoloides is its accommodation of a wide range of nitrogen-fixing bacteria inside root nodules. This ‘promiscuous’ nature of nodulation makes Pueraria phaseoloides an attractive legume to investigate its compliment of both rhizobial and non-rhizobial nitrogen fixers.

Therefore we are undertaking a study to isolate and characterize diazotrophic bacteria from the nodules of Pueraria phaseoloides. We are particularly interested in non-rhizobial nodule forming bacteria and how they communicate with the Pueraria plant for nodulation and nitrogen fixation.

A selective coverage of publications are below.

  1. Wedage, W. M. M., Aberathne, N., Harischandra, I.N., Gunawardana D. (2019) Sub1, a nodulation-proficient Non-Rhizobial inhabitant of Pueraria phaseoloides. The Scientific World Journal (https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/9782684)
  2. M.M Wedage and D. Gunawardana. Rhizobial and Non-rhizobial nodulators of Pueraria phaseoloides (Conference proceedings: International Nitrogen Initiative , Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2016). http://www.ini2016.com/1284