Soil is considered as the hot-spot region of beneficial plant-microbe association. A wide range of soil microbial categories like nitrogen-fixing bacteria, ecto and endo-mycorrhizal fungi and plant growth-promoting bacteria and fungi are seemed to be associated with this beneficial plant-microbe association. The soil microbes confer increased plant growth and productivity against the root patho...

Terrestrial ecosystems consist of mutually dependent producer and decomposer subsystems, but not much is known on how their interactions are modified by plant diversity and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Factorially manipulating grassland plant species diversity and atmospheric CO2 concentrations for five years, we tested whether high diversity or elevated CO2 sustain larger or more a...

BACKGROUND Sale of organic foods is one of the fastest growing market segments within the global food industry. People often buy organic food because they believe organic farms produce more nutritious and better tasting food from healthier soils. Here we tested if there are significant differences in fruit and soil quality from 13 pairs of commercial organic and conventional strawberry agroecos...

The Atacama Desert of northern Chile is one of the driest regions on Earth, with areas that exclude plants and where soils have extremely low microbial biomass. However, in the driest parts of the desert there are microorganisms that colonize the interior of halite nodules in fossil continental evaporites, where they are sustained by condensation of atmospheric water triggered by the salt subst...

Quantification of acidity tolerance in the laboratory may be the first step in rhizobial strain selection for the Amazon region. The present method evaluated rhizobia in Petri dishes with YMA medium at pH 6.5 (control) and 4.5, using scores of 1.0 (sensitive, “no visible” growth) to 4.0 (tolerant, maximum growth). Growth evaluations were done at 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18 day periods. This method perm...

As of 2012, there were an estimated 14,243 ha of seagrass meadows in Tampa Bay. Seagrass meadows are the dominant blue carbon habitat in Tampa Bay, compared to the estimated 6,127 ha of mangroves and 1,779 ha of saltmarsh. However, and unlike mangroves and saltmarshes, the entirety of carbon fixation, growth and decay in seagrass meadows occurs in a submerged environment. While rates of primary...

The present study focused on isolation and characterization of Azospirillum sp. from paddy field soils of Thanjavur (Dt), Tamil Nadu. The physico-chemical characteristics of the soil samples were analysed by using standard methods. Totally nine native strains of Azospirillum were isolated. Among the nine isolated strains three strains were belonging to Azospirillum amazonense and six strains be...

Biological desert crusts are relatively common in the arid deserts of the Sultanate of Oman; however, little is known about their microbial community composition and role in soil fertilization. We compared three crusts from geographically different locations for their soil texture, bacterial community structure, pigment composition and nitrogenase activity. The crusts were growing on alkaline (...

soil organic matters are considered as the animal and plant residues and active components of soils. the cultivation practices will cause the quick removal of organic matters in soils even in those which are not affected by erosion. this study was carried out to assess the level of soil humus in the pilot area, to investigate the positive or negative effect of humus level on soil and to introdu...