Microbes and indoor plants The plant is crucial: specific composition and function of the phyllosphere microbiome of indoor ornamentals – Rocel Amor Ortega – FEMS Microbiology Ecology ($39 for 1 day) The plant microbiome is a key determinant of plant health. Less is known about the phyllosphere microbiota and its driving factors in built environments. To …
So both Hal Levin and I have posted and/or commented on the topic of plants “cleaning” the air in buildings. Most of what’s out there is either anecdotal or based on an old NASA study that would require hundreds of plants in a home to make any appreciable difference. Here’s a couple microBEnet posts on …
A new paper in Frontiers in Microbiology reports the effect of plants on microbes in the environment. It’s about a plant in a box, so if you like cheesy 80’s music, you could play the song Living in a Box from the band with the same title. Here is the study: Microbiome interplay: plants alter microbial …
We recently published a paper (http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/4/e01564-14) reporting that plants grown indoors have different leaf-surface (phyllosphere) bacterial communities than those grown outdoors. We found that Romaine lettuce grown in environmental chambers contains 10- to 100-fold lower numbers of bacteria than age-matched, field-grown lettuce. The bacterial diversity on laboratory-grown lettuce plants was also significantly lower and contained …
New paper out of possible interest to those studying the microbiology of the built environment: Frontiers | Beneficial effects of plant-associated microbes on indoor microbiomes and human health? | Frontiers in Plant-Microbe Interaction. The paper makes some arguments regarding possible connections between indoor plant microbiomes and human health. I am posting this here without commentary in …