SOIL BACTERIA: TRANSPORT IN BIDIMENSIONAL POROUS MEDIA

Abstract

Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens is a soil bacteria used as inoculant for fixing nitrogen in symbiosis with soybean. Bacteria should move close to the roots for infection. Therefore, its motility properties into soil is crucial to be understood. In this work we present a numerical study of bacteria transport properties in 2D porous media using Langevin dynamics. We use solid disks as obstacles. Translational diffusion coefficient is studied as a function of obstacles density and radius. At constant density, we find that diffusion decays while radius increases. These results may help to understand bacteria diffusion in porous media and to improve the design of microfluidics devices for studies in laboratory.