Role of microorganisms in regulating carbon cycle in tropical and subtropical soils

Abstract

The tropics and subtropics of the world are the most densely populated regions of the world. A majority of its population thrives on agriculture for sustaining its livelihood and nutritional requirement. With the increase in the global population and many new technological breakthroughs in agriculture, the food production has increased many folds from these regions. These regions are now being called the food bowl of the world. Albeit of these facts, intensive agro-practices have led to increased burden on our natural resources, in particular to our soils. It is now very well established that soil organic carbon content is getting depleted at a faster rate than the rate at which they are being replenished. Naturally, the biogeochemical cycling of the organic matter efficiently and harmoniously is being orchestrated by the soil microbial flora. Studying the responses of soil microbial flora with respect to various cues of the environmental and anthropogenic activities is helping the soil ecologist and microbiologist in monitoring and controlling any disturbances in the soil carbon cycling. Many of the high precision modelling techniques involving amalgamation of high-throughput spectrometric and next-generation genomic tools have helped over time in closely monitoring and generating high-precision modelling of the soil organic carbon cycling of the region.