Soil
Handful of soil is full of thousands of species of micro-organisms, the smallest of those being single-celled bacteria, amobeas, ciliates, flagellates and fungi like yeats, and various multi-celled fungi. This very complex and diverse world of micro-organisms is an excellent indicator to describe and monitore the health of the soil.
To describe the variety, number of distinct species and their evenness present in the life below ground a term “soil biodiversity” is used. This term may be extended to encompass also functional, structural, phenotypic or trophic diversity. The diversity of micro-organisms in the soil plays many fundamental roles in delivering key ecosystem goods and services, and is both directly and indirectly responsible for carrying out many key functions like nutrient storage and release, carbon and nitrogen cycling, decomposition, mineralization, degradation of pollutants, infiltration and storage of water, building total organic matter, etc. Some micro-organisms release growth factors for plants, some micro-organisms prey on or compete with disease-causing organisms.
During the past few years BiotaP’s scientists have successfully developed a new approach to diagnose the state of a soil through genomic content. Results of the metagenomic tests help monitoring the microbiological activity of the soil i.e. total number of bacteria, the number of ammonificators, dehydrogenic activity of soil, free nitrogen-fixing bacteria, azotobacteria, fungi and actinomycetes.
Among other topics, the metagenomic test systems can also help determine whether the field needs more fertilizers, has the vibration caused loss in soil biodiversity ie in soil fertility, have the contaminants caused serious decline in soil biodiversity, has the excess amount of crop residue caused the loss of organic matter, or have the root residues from new GMO’s affected the soil health, etc.
