Abstract
A future bio-based production will require increased agricultural management for production of food and biofuels. An intensified production may impair the carbon sequestration in the soil and increase release of carbon to the atmosphere due to actions by the microorganisms responsible for carbon cycling in agricultural soils. Global climate projections depend today on models that estimate the carbon fluxes from soils under land use and climate change. Despite the known importance of soil microorganisms we lack knowledge of the mechanisms involved and the genetic identity of the key microbial actors of carbon cycling in soils. The aim of this project is to determine the functional diversity of microorganisms on gene level that is directly affecting carbon cycling in agricultural soils. We propose here a way to develop and use cost efficient methods to determine genetic diversity of extracellular enzymes produced by soil microorganism. We will adopt the sequence capture technique coupled with next generation sequencing to efficiently enrich for genes involved in the degradation of complex carbon sources, that is up to 200 times faster and 100 times cheaper than conventional technology. We will apply the methods on soils from 25 farms in Europe and Sweden with varied management intensities and with bioinfomatics the sequences generated will provide us the diversity and functions of microorganisms in soil communities.
Sweden