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Home Page: http://www.arserrc.gov/mbb/

Mission:
The mission of the Microbial Biophysics and Residue Chemistry Unit is to facilitate the development of (1) sustainable agriculture practices friendly to the environment and (2) effective surveillance methods to assure food safety for consumers. This is achieved through research on theuse of soil fungi to enhance mineral-nutrient uptake by crops and in the development of advanced techniques for the detection of pathogenic bacteria and chemical residues in food. The unit also provides core instrumentationand information technologies to support all Center research programs. Research is focused on generating knowledge for creating (1) host-plant free culture systems to produce arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, (2) in vivo microscopic and NMR technologies to follow nutrient movements between plantroots and symbiotic microbes, (3) biosensor methods to rapidly detect the presence of pathogenic bacteria in food, (4) methods to rapidly separate and concentrate targeted pathogenic bacteria in food samples and (5) efficient and effective lab-based and field-based approaches to analyzeveterinary drug and pesticide residues in foods.