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.
This summer we got to collaborate with a fun project organized by the MINT Campus in Germany. Not only does MINT campus inspire children and young people about these topics but it also introduces young people to sustainable, innovative developments in current research and technology.
Whether you are studying the genetic material of plants, brains or viruses, the experiment usually starts with extracting RNA from the sample material. It would be incredibly useful to get all the RNA extracted instead of it getting destroyed by the RNases before even starting the cDNA synthesis step. But how can we protect the RNA when RNases are all around us? Let’s find out!
There aren’t many people who can lead teams as well as our Head of Quality and Product Management Eva-Maria does. She is like that red string on a mystery board connecting all the departments. If you would like to get a little closer to solving the great leadership puzzle that Eva-Maria has mastered, have a look at the following story.
On the 4th and 5th of June representatives from South Korea visited Tartu. Their primary focus was on exploring opportunities in the fields of biotechnology and medicine, seeking potential collaborators in Estonia. We had the great pleasure of meeting the delegation and sharing our knowledge on both days of the visit.
