About this Research Topic
Cover crops are increasingly adopted as a tool for improving soil health in US agriculture. Growers are demanding cover crops that serve a broader range of cropping systems, and a better understanding of how to deploy them for the greatest soil health benefit. Through this Research Topic, we aim to provide accurate information about how the effect of cover crops will impact soil health in the agricultural landscape. As the benefits mediated by shifts in the soil microbiome are not yet understood enough to be incorporated into current cash crop recommendations, we aim to make a strong move toward correcting that knowledge deficit.
It is imperative to address this significant knowledge gap by connecting genomic characterization of the soil microbiome with soil functional responses that can be applied at the field level, to fine-tune cover crops as a soil health-promoting practice for crop production systems. The cover crops differ markedly in their functional impacts belowground, which allows us to test mechanisms of soil-health promotion that are mediated by cover crops and identify those specific to different field crops.
When considering how to interpret data describing soil microbial communities, the impacts of recent methodological advances for identifying the full range of microbiota in environmental samples cannot be overstated. Historically, microbial components of ecosystems were largely treated as an unknown mix of organisms – the ‘black box’ of microbial ecology. More sophisticated approaches such as analyses of full soil metagenomes using shotgun or long-read DNA sequencing and community interaction networks help address this challenge. They provide information not just on taxonomic diversity, but also on functional gene diversity and community-level traits. This Research Topic will also promote multi-omics approaches such as transcriptomics, metagenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to study soil-plant-covercrop-microbiome interactions.
This Research Topic will lay the groundwork for understanding the interactions between in situ soil microbial diversity and the plant rhizosphere under current farming systems and soil health practices, especially cover crops. The use of molecular analysis tools to study soil microbial ecology has the potential to yield extensive knowledge concerning the function of microorganisms in soil ecosystems and their interactions with one another as well as with the plants that they infect or colonize. In addition, this Research Topic will address the evaluation of the potential for soil health practices, which increase the diversity and resilience of the soil microbiome, as well as commercially available biocontrol agents to foster plant health.
It is imperative to address this significant knowledge gap by connecting genomic characterization of the soil microbiome with soil functional responses that can be applied at the field level, to fine-tune cover crops as a soil health-promoting practice for crop production systems. The cover crops differ markedly in their functional impacts belowground, which allows us to test mechanisms of soil-health promotion that are mediated by cover crops and identify those specific to different field crops.
When considering how to interpret data describing soil microbial communities, the impacts of recent methodological advances for identifying the full range of microbiota in environmental samples cannot be overstated. Historically, microbial components of ecosystems were largely treated as an unknown mix of organisms – the ‘black box’ of microbial ecology. More sophisticated approaches such as analyses of full soil metagenomes using shotgun or long-read DNA sequencing and community interaction networks help address this challenge. They provide information not just on taxonomic diversity, but also on functional gene diversity and community-level traits. This Research Topic will also promote multi-omics approaches such as transcriptomics, metagenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to study soil-plant-covercrop-microbiome interactions.
This Research Topic will lay the groundwork for understanding the interactions between in situ soil microbial diversity and the plant rhizosphere under current farming systems and soil health practices, especially cover crops. The use of molecular analysis tools to study soil microbial ecology has the potential to yield extensive knowledge concerning the function of microorganisms in soil ecosystems and their interactions with one another as well as with the plants that they infect or colonize. In addition, this Research Topic will address the evaluation of the potential for soil health practices, which increase the diversity and resilience of the soil microbiome, as well as commercially available biocontrol agents to foster plant health.
Keywords: Soil microbiome, plant microbiome, plant-microbiome interactions, metagenomics, cover crop- microbiome, agroecology, multi-omics
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