Vidya Suseela

• Ph.D
• Professor (Associate) at Clemson University

Rhizosphere soil microbes are increasingly recognized for their significant roles in enhancing plant resilience to abiotic stress and stimulating plant growth. Rhizobiome adapted to dry conditions can enhance drought tolerance in crops by cross-inoculation. However, changes in the rhizobiome that help in conferring drought tolerance remain poorly u...

Nitrogen (N) availability often limits plant growth and primary productivity of forests (Högberg et al., 2017). Up to 95% of N pools in forest soils are present in organic forms, primarily as proteinaceous compounds and heterocyclic N molecules (Nicolás et al., 2019;Wang et al., 2020). Although, within the traditional framework, the utilization of...

Mycorrhizas are widespread below‐ground symbioses formed between plant roots and soil fungi. This plant–fungal partnership impacts terrestrial ecosystems by mediating plant performance and biogeochemical processes. The influence of mycorrhizas on plant and ecosystem functioning is ultimately driven by the biological processes that regulate plant–my...

Lignin is an important root chemical component that is widely used in biogeochemical models to predict root decomposition. Across ecological studies, lignin abundance has been characterized using both proximate and lignin‐specific methods, without much understanding of their comparability. This uncertainty in estimating lignin limits our ability to...

Managing weeds and soil-borne pathogens is one of the most challenging aspects of organic crop production. Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) has been identified as a microbial-driven approach capable of suppressing weed species and soilborne pathogens. The carbon substrate is a critical component of ASD that can be optimized to enhance pest contr...

Cover crops (CCs) can increase soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration by providing additional OC residues, recruiting beneficial soil microbiota, and improving soil aggregation and structure. The various CC species that belong to distinct plant functional types (PFTs) may differentially impact SOC formation and stabilization. Biogeochemical theory...

Cover crops (CCs) can increase soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration by providing additional OC residues, recruiting beneficial soil microbiota, and improving soil aggregation and structure. The various CC species that belong to distinct plant functional types (PFTs) may differentially impact SOC formation and stabilization. Biogeochemical theory...

Rhizobiome confer stress tolerance to ruderal plants, yet their ability to alleviate stress in crops is widely debated, and the associated mechanisms are poorly understood. We monitored the drought tolerance of maize (Zea mays) as influenced by the cross‐inoculation of rhizobiota from a congeneric ruderal grass Andropogon virginicus (andropogon‐ino...

The symbiosis of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) with plants, the most ancient and widespread association, exhibits phenotypes that range from mutualism to parasitism. However, we still lack an understanding of the cellular‐level mechanisms that differentiate and regulate these phenotypes. We assessed the modulation in growth parameters and root...

Convergent patterns in morphological and genetic traits of mycorrhizas have been well-documented and reflect common selection forces that define mycorrhizas. However, generalizable patterns of mycorrhiza-associated chemical alterations, which are immediately linked to plant and fungal strategies for successful symbiosis, have yet to be emerged. Com...

Warming can increase the efflux of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from soils and can potentially feedback to climate change. In addition to warming, the input of labile carbon can enhance the microbial activity by stimulating the co-metabolism of recalcitrant soil organic matter (SOM). This is particularly true with SOM under invaded ecosystems where eleva...

Recent studies on fine root functional traits proposed a root economics hypothesis where adaptations associated with mycorrhizal dependency strongly influence the organization of root traits, forming a dominant axis of trait covariation unique to roots. This conclusion, however, is based on tradeoffs of a few widely studied root traits. It is unkno...

Plant invasion can dramatically impact soil carbon (C) cycling and sequestration while, other global change factors, such as nitrogen (N) deposition, are predicted to promote plant invasion. However, questions remain as to whether the chemical composition of soil organic C (SOC) may alter with plant invasion and how N availability modulates the inv...

Invasive plants are key drivers of global environmental changes leading to the disruption of ecosystems. Many invasive species engage in novel niche construction through plant–soil feedbacks that are driven by plant secondary compounds. These compounds can persist in the soil even after removing the invader, thus creating a legacy effect that inhib...

Fine roots of trees exhibit varying degree of plasticity to adapt to environmental stress. Although the morphological and physiological plasticity of roots has been well studied, less known are the accompanying changes in the chemical composite (chemical plasticity) of fine roots, which regulates both root function and soil carbon sequestration. We...

Microbial extracellular enzymes decompose distinct components of soil organic matter (SOM), thus influencing its stability. However, we lack the knowledge about how the kinetics of individual enzymes vary when multiple substrates change simultaneously. Here we used Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) invasion as a model system to explore how t...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is among the most ubiquitous plant mutualists that enhance plant growth and yield by facilitating the uptake of phosphorus and water. The countless interactions that occur in the rhizosphere between plants and its AMF symbionts are mediated through the plant and fungal metabolites that ensure partner recognition,...

Cellular homeostasis is maintained by the proteasomal degradation of regulatory and misfolded proteins, which sustains the amino acid pool. Although proteasomes alleviate stress by removing damaged proteins, mounting evidence indicates that severe stress caused by salt, metal(oids), and some pathogens can impair the proteasome. However, the consequ...

Decomposition of plant litter is a fundamental ecosystem process that can act as a feedback to climate change by simultaneously influencing both the productivity of ecosystems and the flux of carbon dioxide from the soil. The influence of climate on decomposition from a postsenescence perspective is relatively well known; in particular, climate is...

Decomposition of plant litter is a fundamental ecosystem process that can act as a feedback to climate change by simultaneously influencing both the productivity of ecosystems and the flux of carbon dioxide from the soil. The influence of climate on decomposition from a post-senescence perspective is relatively well known; in particular, climate is...

A majority of soil carbon (C) is either directly or indirectly derived from fine roots, yet roots remain the least understood component of the terrestrial carbon cycle. The decomposability of fine roots and their potential to contribute to soil C is partly regulated by their tissue chemical composition. Roots rely heavily on heteropolymers such as...

Through the input of disproportionate quantities of chemically distinct litter, invasive plants may potentially influence the fate of organic matter associated with soil mineral and aggregate fractions in some of the ecosystems they invade. Though context dependent, these native ecosystems subjected to prolonged invasion by exotic plants may be ins...

Significance One of the greatest challenges in projecting future shifts in the global climate is understanding how soil respiration rates will change with warming. Multiple experimental warming studies have explored this response, but no consensus has been reached. Based on a global synthesis of 27 experimental warming studies spanning nine biomes,...

Summary 1.Introduced, invasive plants can alter local soil chemistry and microbial communities, but the underlying mechanisms and extent of these changes are largely unknown. Based on characteristics associated with invasiveness in plants, it was hypothesized that introduced species that produce large amounts of litter with distinctive secondary co...

The process of nutrient retranslocation from plant leaves during senescence subsequently affects both plant growth and soil nutrient cycling; changes in either of these could potentially feed back to climate change. Although elemental nutrient resorption has been shown to respond modestly to temperature and precipitation, we know remarkably little...

Fine roots constitute a significant source of plant productivity and litter turnover across terrestrial ecosystems, but less is known about the quantitative and qualitative profile of phenolic compounds within the fine root architecture, which could regulate the potential contribution of plant roots to soil organic matter pool. To understand the l...

2014. Litters of photosynthetically divergent grasses exhibit differential metabolic responses to warming and elevated CO 2 . Ecosphere 5(9): Abstract. Climatic stress such as warming would alter physiological pathways in plants leading to changes in tissue chemistry. Elevated CO 2 could partly mitigate warming induced moisture stress, and the degr...

Background/Question/Methods Plant litter is the precursor of most soil organic matter (SOM) and the major energy source for sustaining most of the heterotrophic soil biota that actively facilitates SOM formation. Invasive plant species that input disproportionate quantities of chemically distinct litter could greatly influence SOM formation. Yet...

Background/Question/Methods One of the most important community-level effects of introduced plants is to alter the communities of microbes in the soil. Discovering the mechanisms for this effect could help show why some introduced plants are more invasive than others and suggest how to restore invaded communities. We hypothesized that the introduc...

Background/Question/Methods Plants resorb ~50% of both nitrogen and phosphorus from the leaves during senescence. Thus, nutrient resportion is a fundamental ecosystem process that not only affects the fitness of perennial species but also influences ecosystem nutrient cycling through the chemical composition of senesced tissues. Currently nutrien...

Background/Question/Methods Plants produce a multitude of secondary metabolites that enhance their fitness in different environmental conditions. The production of these metabolites varies in response to environmental cues, resource availabilities and defense requirements. Although the production of chemical defenses involves high metabolic cost,...

As a key component of the carbon cycle, soil CO2 efflux (SCE) is being increasingly studied to improve our mechanistic understanding of this important carbon flux. Predicting ecosystem responses to climate change often depends on extrapolation of current relationships between ecosystem processes and their climatic drivers to conditions not yet expe...

As a key component of the carbon cycle, soil CO2 efflux (SCE) is being increasingly studied to improve our mechanistic understanding of this important carbon flux. Predicting ecosystem responses to climate change often depends on extrapolation of current relationships between ecosystem processes and their climatic drivers to conditions not yet expe...

Background/Question/Methods To improve our understanding of ecosystem process responses to long-term changes in climate, we exposed an old-field ecosystem to twelve combinations of warming and precipitation change over five years. Four warming treatments (up to +4 degrees C) were applied using infrared heaters, and precipitation was manipulated usi...

Together, climate and litter quality strongly regulate decomposition rates. Although these two factors and their interaction have been studied across species in continent‐scale experiments, few researchers have studied how labile and recalcitrant compounds interact to influence decomposition, or the climate sensitivity of decomposition, within a li...

Responses of soil respiration (Rs) to anthropogenic climate change will affect terrestrial carbon storage and, thus, feed back to warming. To provide insight into how warming and changes in precipitation regimes affect the rate and temperature sensitivity of Rs and rhizosphere respiration (Rr) across the year, we subjected a New England old-field e...

Shifts in nitrogen (N) mineralization and nitrification rates due to global changes can influence nutrient availability, which can affect terrestrial productivity and climate change feedbacks. While many single-factor studies have examined the effects of environmental changes on N mineralization and nitrification, few have examined these effects in...

Background/Question/Methods Decomposition of plant litter not only recycles nutrients locked in the senesced plant biomass back to the ecosystem, thus sustaining ecosystem productivity, but also releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Predicted climate warming may increase litter decomposition rates and CO2 efflux, resulting in a positive feed...

Microbial decomposition of soil organic matter produces a major flux of CO2 from terrestrial ecosystems and can act as a feedback to climate change. Although climate-carbon models suggest that warming will accelerate the release of CO2 from soils, the magnitude of this feedback is uncertain, mostly due to uncertainty in the temperature sensitivity...

Background/Question/Methods Quantifying the effect of temperature, moisture and substrate availability on soil respiration and its components is critical to predict the fate of soil carbon under changing climate scenarios. Since soils have large reserves of carbon, any increase in soil respiration due to climate change could accelerate global war...

• Climate change could increase the frequency with which plants experience abiotic stresses, leading to changes in their metabolic pathways. These stresses may induce the production of compounds that are structurally and biologically different from constitutive compounds. • We studied how warming and altered precipitation affected the composition,...

Background/Question/Methods As a consequence of steadily increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, average world-wide surface temperature is expected to increase 1.5-6.4°C by the end of the 21st Century. Results from manipulative field experiments and ecosystem modeling indicate that plants and soils will be influenced by...

Background/Question/Methods Environmental factors such as soil moisture, temperature and nutrients influence the chemical composition of plant tissues. Resource limitation and stress could cause plants to invest more in secondary metabolites used for defense, including low molecular weight monomeric compounds (phenolics, flavanoids) and large polym...

Background/Question/Methods Soil respiration is the largest flux of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, releasing more carbon than fossil fuel combustion. Since temperature affects soil respiration, on a global scale, even a small warming-induced increase in carbon dioxide emission from soils could act as a positive feedback to climate change. Curren...

Background/Question/Methods Until recently, experimental studies of climate change focused on temperature or precipitation, but rarely both. Additionally, warming studies almost universally focused on the effects of a single step increase in temperature. It is not known whether most ecosystem and community variables respond unimodally, linearly or...

Until recently, experimental studies of climate change focused on temperature or precipitation, but rarely both. Additionally, warming studies almost universally focused on the effects of a single step increase in temperature. It is not known whether most ecosystem and community variables respond unimodally, linearly or otherwise to temperature inc...

Background/Question/Methods Soil respiration is the largest terrestrial source of CO2 to the atmosphere. Soil respiration includes both root and microbial respiration and is sensitive to changes in temperature, moisture and substrate quality. Responses of root respiration to temperature and moisture differ from those of microbial respiration. We ex...