Bioproduction and Soil

An increasing and sustainable plant production will not work in the long-run without a sustainable and efficient use of the necessary resources –in particular the resource `soil´. Soils provide an entire range of indispensable ecosystem services. It is well known that soil quality considerably influences plant quality and production. Moreover, soils play a major role in carbon sequestration, contaminant attenuation and groundwater protection. Land-use and climate change confounded by an increase in contaminants not only threaten soil quality but also soil performance as a service provider.

For this reason we are examining the resource `soil´ more closely – our major interest is dedicated to the soil microflora, its metagenomice and the complex interactions and network stuctures. It is not without reason that the genetic potential of the soil metagenome is often referred to as „the most important natural resource of the 21st Century“, mainly as it closely interacts with the microbiome of plants and thus determines plant performance and health. By implementing cutting-edge technologies based on directly-extracted DNA and RNA as well as soil proteins, we are investigating this resource that so far has only been fractionally understood and will make it accessible for a sustainable plant production.