With the growing population, agriculture is in high demand. E. Coli has been shown to infect agricultural plants. Reducing the number of infected plants would be beneficial. Biochar is a soil amendment that is rich in carbon and can improve plant health. It has been proven to reduce the amount of E.

Coli in stormwater. E. Coli is a bacteria that lives near the roots of the plants and uses its flagella to enter the plant. I used E. Coli K12 for my project and Wisconsin Fast Plants as my model organism. This is a good model organism to use because they grow flowers in 2 weeks. Therefore, the germination and plant height could be collected in a 2 week period. The purpose of this project is to investigate whether or not biochar can reduce the amount of Wisconsin Fast Plants that are infected by E. Coli. I hypothesized that biochar would increase the number of healthy plants.

To test the effectiveness of the biochar on the E. Coli, four separate soil conditions were made. Condition A was the control and consisted of only sterilized soil, to establish the growth rate under my experimental conditions. Condition B was sterilized soil with biochar, Condition C was sterilized soil with E. Coli and Condition D was sterilized soil with biochar and E. Coli. To have a controlled amount of E. Coli, it was added to distilled water and was stained with methylene blue. The amount of E. Coli in the sample was counted using the hemocytometer and had an average of 2 E. Coli per mm2. 50 uL of unstained bacteria was added to the soil of 24 seeds per trial. For each trial, 48 plants were grown under 24 hour light. The plant heights were measured at one and two weeks and averaged. After two weeks, the percentage of seeds that germinated were calculated.

The results showed that E. Coli decreased the percentage of plants that germinated. This is shown because 25% of the plants in the E. Coli and soil germinated, 77% of biochar and soil germinated, and 52% of the control germinated. The plants that were grown in soil and E. Coli had the lowest germination rate and plant height. The average plant height of the plants in soil and E. Coli was 0.7 cm, the control had an average plant height of 1.7 cm, and the average plant height of the soil and biochar was 3.4 cm. An ANOVA, followed by a Tukey test, showed that the difference between the soil with E. Coli compared to the soil with biochar and E. Coli was significant and that the difference in the results between the soil conditions, soil with E. Coli and soil with biochar were also significant. This project was able to conclude that soil that biochar can reduce the number of plants that get infected with E. Coli.