| Grant number: | 11/51749-6 |
| Support Opportunities: | Program for Research on Bioenergy (BIOEN) - Regular Program Grants |
| Start date: | July 01, 2012 |
| End date: | June 30, 2014 |
| Field of knowledge: | Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Soil Science |
| Agreement: | BE-BASIC Consortium |
| Principal Investigator: | Tsai Siu Mui |
| Grantee: | Tsai Siu Mui |
| Principal researcher abroad: | Eiko Eurya Kuramae |
| Institution abroad: | Netherlands Institute Of Ecology , |
| Host Institution: | Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil |
| City of the host institution: | Piracicaba |
Abstract
Previous and ongoing studies of the proposed Be-basic partner have recently defined the Normal Operating Range (NOR) of microbial community structure and functional potential across a range of Dutch soils (EcoGenomics and EcoLinc projects), based upon microarray- and quantitative PCR-based technologies, utilizing an integrated approach of soil analyses, community profiling, qPCR, pyrosequencing, phylogenetic microarrays (PhyloChips) and functional microarrays (GeoChips). Of particular interest, these studies have suggested that distinct microbial groups may be indicative of specific soil conditions, e.g. pH or nutrient status, strongly suggesting that microbial bio-indicators exist in soil that might be exploited to provide rapid information on soil status. We seek in this proposal to systematically assess microbial taxonomical and functional communities more responsive to sugarcane production at different sustainable managements (no-tillage, cover trash and diazotrophic bacteria inoculation); determine the genes categories and key functions (nitrification, nitrogen fixation, denitrification) most indicative of specific soil status; determine functional bio-indicators involved in the emission/sequestration of greenhouse gas emission (C02, CH4, N20) processes; develop high throughput platform to assess and monitor taxonomical and functional bio-indicators that will be obtained in this project for sugarcane biomass production and management; apply bioinformatics tools and multivariate statistical analyses to integrate 'omics' data and soil physico-chemical data for monitoring microbes and gene functions; test and validate the Be-Basic platform in experimental stations of APTA in the São Paulo State. The aim is the identification of numerous taxonomical groups and genes that hold potential for use as bio-indicators of specific attributes of soil status, such as nutrient availability, level of disturbance and soil fertility, and provide proof-of-principle platform for soil quality assessment based on these bio-indicators. The resulting tools will be embedded in a standard approach that starts with the sampling and ends with the diagnostics. This analysis pipeline will be standardized in such a way that limited amount of expert knowledge is required. Our project will be pivotal to BIOEN/FAPESP program, which aims at assessing impacts of a bio-based economy on the environment and human safety. (AU)
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