Soil science
Initiative heralds new era for soil health analysis
• Major project to sample soil microbials • Big benefi ts promised for agriculture • Participants able to review farm practice
ing of the UK’s soil health – and support the nation’s farmers in the process. Launched by Fera Science, the goal of the Big Soil Community is to break down the complexity of soil biology and develop an ap- plied knowledge-base which will support farmers in unlocking the potential of soil health. Fera is extending an open invi- tation for farmers to join the Big Soil Community and participate in a coordinated sampling pro- gramme for analysis of soil mi- crobials. The aim is to provide a benchmark of soil biodiversity at scale – something which has nev- er before been available. Results will provide farmers with valuable information and an assessment of their microbi- ological diversity as well as the tools to benchmark their results against the wider Big Soil Com- munity, providing insight into the impact of soil management, crop rotations and farm system dynamics. Based near York, UK, Fera Sci- ence works with UK and inter- national partners, governments and other public bodies to inno- vate and deliver translational
A
new initiative aims to provide a major leap for- ward in the understand-
science that will protect and en- hance food, plants, animals and the environment.
Project leader
The project is being led by Guy Thallon (pictured), strategic busi- ness development manager in Fera’s crop health division. He said: “Sustainable farming and soil health has never been higher on the agenda as it is now, which is why it is the right time for this study to unlock the potential of soil biology.
“Soil microbial communities in our agricultural systems are incredibly rich and complex but hold great promise for sustaina- ble agriculture. Large-scale, col- laborative projects are required to break down this complexity and move the interest of soil health into a biology space. “We’d therefore greatly en- courage as many farmers as pos- sible to become involved with this community, the more samples that we analyse, the richer the datasets and the quicker the pace of change and understanding.”
Project leader There was growing recognition of the importance of understand- ing soil health beyond that of the traditional physical and chemi-
“
Soil microbial communities hold great promise for sustainable agriculture
cal properties, said Mr Thallon. To date, there has been no unifi ed metric of soil health and limited availability or uptake of commer- cial soil biology measures. Mr Thallon said Fera had rec- ognised that a collaborative effort was required to drive a coordinat- ed approach to understanding the role of soil microbial communities due to the complexity of analys- ing soil biology. As part of the Big Soil Commu- nity project, metagenomics would provide a census of these commu- nities and will barcode popula- tions across different farms and systems. This analysis would de- scribe the diversity of microbial populations.
Doing so would give farmers
the ability to identify similarities and differences which associate with healthy soil conditions and enable them to review their farm- ing practices and potentially take measures to improve the overall health of their soils.
Submit samples Farmers are being invited to join the community until Sep- tember. Successful applicants will be asked to collect and sub- mit their soil samples for analysis as well as information on where the sample was taken from. Results will be returned to participants as an individual report alongside the anonymised Big Soil Community benchmark- ing report of all results. This will provide in-depth descriptions of differences in microbial popula- tions, such as for standard ver- sus low-tillage systems. For full details about the Big Soil Community, visit https://
info.fera.co.uk/bigsoil/
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