Award details

Understanding the role of the soil microbial and invertebrate communities in plant-soil interactions

Reference	BBS/E/C/00005741
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Philip Murray
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Rothamsted Research
Department	Rothamsted Research Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	971,961
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2008
End date	31/03/2012
Duration	48 months

Abstract

The major route of carbon (C) into soils is through plant material, either as plant root exudates or decomposing organic matter. The quality and quantity of C entering below-ground ecosystems are generally controlled through agricultural management practices driving changes in the above-ground botanical composition. Soil food webs are based on three different C pools - root exudates, litter, and recalcitrant soil organic matter. It is thought that these create 3 distinct energy channels in the soil food web and are thus critical in controlling soil community compositional dynamics and also many of those soil functions considered desirable in healthy soils. Although the relative size of the 'living' soil C pool (the microbial biomass) is small compared to the total C pool, it is the former that is important in facilitating the cycling of nutrients in the soil. We will be testing how changes in the quality and quantity of C entering the soil are driven by changes in plant species composition and how such changes impact on soil communities and the functions that they perform. We will study: 1) the mechanism of C movement from the plant into soil food webs, both the relative importance of exudation and litter inputs and how management (including root herbivory) influences this; 2) the relative importance of the different feeding (energy) channels in the soil and how they interact with soil functions; 3) the relative importance of biotic and abiotic modifiers of C turnover and how it changes with scale; 4) how management and soil type influence rhizosphere community selection by plants.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Agri-food (AF)
Research Topics	Crop Science, Microbiology, Plant Science, Soil Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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