Little is known about the impacts of transgenic plants and micro-organisms on soil biota and processes, despite the large number of field releases of transgenic crops. Recent work has shown that transgenic plants can cause changes in the soil biota (both invertebrates and micro-organisms) associated with these plants. Often the changes are transient but their impact on the soil ecosystem remain...

The nutrient elements uptake in many of soils, is a problem because of high pH and plenty of calcium ions in them. Some of these elements are phosphorus and microelements. It is possible to increase absorption of these nutrient elements by addition of sulfur in soil and biological oxidation. The rate of this reaction is very slow and Thiobacillus bacteria are the most important oxidators of sul...

The nutrient elements uptake in many of soils, is a problem because of high pH and plenty of calcium ions in them. Some of these elements are phosphorus and microelements. It is possible to increase absorption of these nutrient elements by addition of sulfur in soil and biological oxidation. The rate of this reaction is very slow and Thiobacillus bacteria are the most important oxidators of sul...

It is important to identify and recover bacteria associating with fungi under natural soil conditions to enable eco-physiological studies, and to facilitate the use of bacterial-fungal consortia in environmental biotechnology. We have developed a novel type of baiting microcosm, where fungal hyphae interact with bacteria under close-to-natural soil conditions; an advantage compared to model sys...

Direct counting techniques, first developed for aquatic samples, can be used to enumerate bacteria in soil and groundwater sediments. Two fluorescent dyes, 5-cyano-2,3-ditolyl tetrazolium chloride (CTC) for actively respiring bacteria and 4(prm1),6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) for total bacteria, were tested for their usefulness in epifluorescent direct bacterial enumeration in soil. Both dy...

The purpose of this research has been to identify relationships between soil moisture and the growth and development of microorganisms, their diversity and the activity of soil enzymes. Four soils with different texture were analysed. Air-dry soils were watered up to the moisture content corresponding to 20, 40 and 60% of the maximum water capacity (MWC) and subsequently were submitted to deter...