The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is celebrating World Soil Day!
This year’s campaign is called „Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity “. It aims to raise awareness of the importance of sustaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being.
We are very happy that many scientists from all over the world have decided to use Solis BioDyne’s products to contribute to soil research. Here are a few summaries of publications showing the usage of our products in that field.
Soil is home to many different bacteria. One group of them, called plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), offers an environmentally safe alternative to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides used to improve the growth and health of plants.
A group of scientists from Poland (Kępczyńska, E. & Karczyński, P) conducted a screening of seventy-two bacterial isolates from rhizospheric soil and root nodule samples of legumes for their growth-promoting capacities. They saw that the inoculation of seedlings with plant growth-promoting bacteria resulted in enhanced root and shoot weight and a more branched root system. Using Solis BioDyne’s HOT FIREPol® EvaGreen® qPCR Mix Plus in their qPCR experiments, they also discovered that three selected bacterial strains were able to enhance the expression of the WOX5 gene in roots, which is associated with promoting the growth of root tips and lateral zones.
Great to see such discoveries about environmentally friendly solutions in agriculture!
Potato is a popular crop all around the world. However, potato plants are exposed to various pathogens. A group of Estonian scientists (Loit et al.) decided to take a deeper look into soil-borne fungal pathogens and genotypic differences in biotic stress resistance in potato plants.
They extracted DNA from the roots and soil of 21 potato cultivars and identified the fungal and pathogenic species of the samples by amplifying the ITS2 region using Solis BioDyne’s HOT FIREPol® Blend Master Mix. The amplicons were then subjected to high-throughput sequencing. Their results show changes of soil and root fungal communities of potato over the growing season and demonstrate that in roots, the cultivar is the primary factor determining overall fungal, pathogen, and saprotroph community composition.
Understanding the exact fungal pathogens associated with certain cultivars can lead to more environmentally friendly decisions in increasing the yield of the crop and thinking about healthier soil ecosystems!
It has been shown that global warming is tightly bound to N2O emission from agricultural production due to mineral or organic fertilizers used in soil. Fortunately, biochar has been seen as a promising solution in mitigating that effect. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon that is produced by heating organic material in a zero- or low-oxygen environment.
A group of German scientists contributed to better understand the effect of biochar. Different conditions and compositions of biochar and N fertilizers were studied. In addition to these aspects, they also examined the microbial community composition and the abundance of the functional gene, nosZ, that also plays part in N2O transformation. They extracted DNA from soil samples and measured the abundance of nosZ gene using our HOT FIREPol® EvaGreen® HRM Mix and found that the mean of the nosZ gene did not differ in biochar-treated and untreated samples. However, changes in other aspects led them to conclude that biochar can reduce the greenhouse gas effect at high levels of N supply and may stimulate nutrient uptake when no N is added.
Studying the ways of soil management that can reduce global warming can lead to a better and healthier environment in the future!
Here is an additional selection of publications using our products on soil research:
Our newest and most robust endpoint PCR mix - SolisFAST® Master Mix with UNG – has received great feedback from French Guyana for its inhibitor tolerance in difficult soil samples.
There are two options for target detection when doing qPCR - either you use dye or probe-based detection. Today we are going to take a deep dive into the world of dye-based qPCR, which was invented during the early nineties by Russell Higuchi [1] and is still used daily around the world.
Depression is a very complex disease, and it has many different aspects that affect it. Once we get to know more and more things about depression and its mechanisms, then in the end, we might discover new possible drugs or drug targets for treating depression.
If you ever need someone to help you with your computer, fix your house, join you in a sports competition, or just be a friend, Marek is your guy. Being one of the friendliest, most helpful people out there certainly makes him a really cool person everyone should know more about.
Solis BioDyne has always welcomed all innovative ideas with open hands. In order to elevate our mission and introduce new solutions to the field of genetic testing, we are delighted to present to you our OEM service offerings. Learn how you can implement the Stability TAG technology into your business.
