"Mozilla/3.01Gold (Win95; I) [Netscape]">

7. Acknowledgments

Overall Inspiration and Literature: To give me an introduction on rhizobia, a week spent at Zhang Xiaoping at Yaan Agriculture University was very helpful, and he generously equipped me with much literature. The next crucial event for the design of this work was the opportunity to participate in the International Symposium on Diversity and Taxonomy of Rhizobia held in October 1994 at the Wuhan University. I owe the participants (most of them far more mature than me) very much for their patience in discussions and answering questions I asked them. Three of the participants, notably Prof. Steven Pueppke (Plant Pathology, Univ. Missouri) and Prof. B. Dov Kishinevsky (Volcani Center, Institute for Field & Garden Crops, Bet-Dagan, Israel) sent me BA and CABS literature surveys on nitrogen fixation in cold environments and A. Martensson (Soil Fertility & Plant Nutrition, Univ. Uppsala) sent me an article on pea optimization in cold environments. Prof. Zhou Junchu (Huazhong Agric. Univ., Wuhan) helped me with the Cao (1972) paper and Prof. Tsuzuyaki sent his work on Ruoergai marshlands. Usually however, Sichuan Union University's libraries have been the source for my scientific information, sometimes enriched by articles from the Provincial Science & Technology Information Institute or the West China University of Medicine (apparently quite complete for the microbiological literature even during dark times). The Agriculture Institute at Chengdu houses another treasure: Fred's 1932 handbook. ICIMOD (Kathmandu) also helped with materials. I also used the CD-ROM BIOSIS database at the West China University of Medicine as well as the CD-ROM Chinese Scientific Abstracts at Sichuan Union University. Usually my (sometimes greedy) demands were met by friendly librarians and I want to express my gratuitous feeling to them here. For more awkward literature demands, my brother Robert Blasum searched several times the Central Agricultural Library of Bonn University. Daniel Winkler (now Colorado) did the same for me at Munich University, and furthermore communicated to me his work about Aba province.

Experimental design: From our laboratory, Cao Yi provided expertise on experimental design, and Prof. Zeng Zongyong from the ecology department also helped me with suggesting designs for field experiments.

Field work: Although we only name farm leader Kchodba, Tang Maolin, Li Xulan, Fatma, Ferbu and Zhu Yong, many people from different ethnoi accomodated, "fed" us, and helped us while doing the fieldwork at Xiaman. Bai Zhengqiang, Zhang Jianchen and Yang Zongrong from the Hongyuan Grassland Institute gave us the Vicia sativa seeds they had selected and regrown (after introducing from Brazil) as well as valuable advice. In the Aug. 1995 excursion, Long Zhang, Qiao Jianyuan and Yang Zhongxin were helpful companions, in the Oct 1995 excursion I was joined by my wife and Andreas Gruneberg from Hamburg. The subsequent year, Zhang Denghong, Wang Feng and Jiang Yan were dedicatedly helping me with the field work. Xiangqiu Duoji (Chengdu Nationalities Institute) interviewed 35 Hongyuan nomads about their awareness of legumes.

Soil samples and analyses: Markus Leuthold (Zurich) brought me samples from the Lhasa-Yangbajing area, and Gary Pasquarell helped me with a Hongyuan soil sample in May. As mentioned above, the soil element content analyses were done by Luo Ying at the Academia Sinica's Mountain Hazard Institute's Soil Analysis Lab in Chengdu. After the controversial soil pH findings, the three aforementioned labs the analyses were repeated in were, Zhang Yizheng (Molecular Biology), Zhang Yang (Chemistry Dept.)and Li Qi (Biomedicine Lab.). This discrepancy was also confirmed by Ji Guoliang at the renowned Academia Sinica Institute for Soil Science, Nanjing.

Plant identification: A course on plant taxonomy by Prof. Xu Jiemei made me aware of the importance of correct identification of plants. Besides instructing me in how to preserve herbarium specimens, Prof. Zhao and Wu were generously allowing me to use the herbarium of Sichuan Union University, but I admit I used it only to familiarize myself with some of plants; most identifications (except the simplest grasses) were done by Prof. Tan Zhongming, Zhao Zuocheng and Yang Guanghui (Academia Sinica, Chengdu) and Xu Langran (legumes, NW Institute of Botany, Yangling, Shaanxi). Of course, I didn't have them with me in the field, and most specimens I presented to them were not meeting strict demands. So all errors are mine. Especially the non-legumes and non-grasses ("forbs") are prone to errors and I also omitted "difficult" genera - for example there are more than 20 Pedicularis species around the Hongyuan area (Zhang Jianchu, pers. comm.).

Wetbench labor: Nodulation experiments: The first nodulation experiments in 1994 were done with Bai Linhan and Xie Zhijian. A more time-consuming batch was done by Huang Yu in summer 1995, and it was frustrating for both of us that no results came out. Xue Hong and Zhang Denghong (gifted and meticulous undergrads of our department) sacrificed voluntarily substantial parts of their 1996 summer vacations to help me with the numerical taxonomy. To be more precise, each of both did some 2,500 blots and poured an estimated 200 agar plates. Furthermore, they helped to get through this tedious work spiritually. Similarly, Wang Feng, Jiang Yan and Wu Xiaorong helped me very much with the PCR analyses. When our lab was busy with moving, some selective media experiments were done with the friendly support of Prof. Tan Hong (Acedemia Sinica, Chengdu). I also want to express my gratitude to Pablo Vinuesa Fleischmann and colleagues at Marburg University for allowing me to test a wider range of rhizobia on other triphenylmethane media.

Data analysis: Zhang Jinshan and Kidata (both Dept. of Computer Science) told me a lot of basic things about the C language, and the former also designed a skeleton of a Chinese reference manager for me. The cluster analysis was originally designed by Long Zhang in the BASIC language. Prof. Wen Qiyun (mathematics) gave me some good suggestions on the use of Kendall's tau. Du Jianhua kindly arranged the borrowing of a PC when it was needed.

Generous donations: Prof. Chen Wenxin (Dept. Microbiology, China Agricultural University, Beijing) gave us the rhizobial type strains and valuable advice. Other bacterial strains were given to us by Ge Shaorong, Liu Wenxun (SUU), Zhang Xiaoping and the SW China Medical Univ. Microbiology Dept. Primers and (published and unpublished) advice how to use them were given by Prof. Kristina Lindstroem (Univ. Helsinki, Finland; she also kindly read an early draft of this thesis) and brought to me by Zhang Xiaoping (Yaan Agric. Univ.), other primers came from Prof. Chen Junjie (Mol. Biology Lab, West Chine Univ. Medical Sciences,Chengdu). Onobrychis viciaefolia seeds were organized Song Xugui (Sichuan Agriculture Ministry) from Ganzi, and Liu Chunhe (Inner Mongolia Qingshui River Grassland Station) once sent me Hedysarum fruticosum seeds.

Funding: My stay at Sichuan Union University has been enabled by a joint exchange agreement between the PR China State Education Commission and the German Academic Exchange Organization. As this didn't include any living expenses, I'm grateful to my parents for covering that title. Research funding was covered by a Sichuan University Young Researchers' Grant.

Tutelage: My first immediate tutor was the diligent microbiologist Zeng Ying, who not only in academic affairs has given me much expertise. After he left for a position at Florida State Univ. in January 1996, Dr. Zhou Jiming (genetics) was assigned to me who ardently has been supporting me, and I am also most grateful to have learnt many things from him - not only biology. My tutor has been Prof. Liu Shigui, who is a distinguished scholar on grassland protection. He has been responsible for me all the time and I have the most cordial feelings for his caring for me, all the more as I didn't fulfill his wish to find something which can go into mass production rapidly.

"Unclassified", but not the less important thanks: For a medium-sized lab, the working atmosphere has been agreeable, and I'd like to thank Zhu Wen, Bai Linhan, Xie Zhijian, Jing Renzhi, Cao Yi, Zhang Zhaoqing, Zhang Li, Xu Heng, Hou Ruotong, Ge Shaorong, Yang Zhirong, Shen Bian, Dr. Gao, Dr. Yang and many others for day-to-day cooperation, instruction and many amusing hours. Special thanks go to our technician Gao Jikui, as well as Wang Yang and Ge Zhiyong, who have the ingratuating job to provide for everything we need and who also cleaned and autoclaved considerable amounts of glassware. As this after all is a biology thesis, I cannot really adequately express the due amount of thanks to my neighbors (the Hu family), friends in Chengdu and my Chinese family, but at least it should be said I owe them a lot. I was always treated with fairness and often most warmly friendliness by the Sichuanese public, which considering the situation of Chinese in Germany is well worth mentioning.

My wife, Liu Yongmei, missed me a lot while she was already in Germany and I was working on this thesis. She also gave me warmth and support without which this work would have been impossible.

Chengdu, January 9th, 1997,
Holger Blasum