Dr. Claudia Goyer

You are what you eat – those words ring true whether you are a plant, a crop, or a person. Farmers will tell you that a good harvest begins with healthy soil. The more they know about the make-up of their soil, and the microorganisms living in their fields, the better able they are to address potential problems. One breakthrough technique is now helping farmers and researchers grow better crops.

Having a clear picture of what's happening with the soil organisms is critical to understanding and addressing plant disease, plant productivity, and soil health. The ability to rapidly gather and interpret data helps researchers and farmers to identify problem areas and develop targeted solutions to increase soil health and plant productivity. Gathering this information used to be an extremely labour-intensive and time-consuming process, but advances in sequencing technology have changed that. Next Generation Sequencing, or NGS, is a game-changing innovation that played a part in mapping the human genome. It has become more advanced and more accessible over the past decade, enabling AAFC scientists to apply it in their work, with exciting results.

Scientists, like Dr. Claudia Goyer from the Fredericton Research and Development Centre, are making use of NGS to understand how agricultural practices influence diversity within soil microbial communities. NGS allows researchers to gather large amounts of data at once, providing detailed information about the types of organisms in the soil or plant sample.

"This technology allows us to learn a lot about what's happening with the soil, and what might be affecting crop growth," Dr. Goyer explains. "It gives us in-depth information about entire microbial communities in soil, something that was not possible until the advent of NGS."

"The quality and quantity of data we can gather with NGS has created new possibilities. The more data we have to work with, the more thorough our understanding of soil microbes – how they behave with changes in soil properties or environmental conditions, and how they interact with one another. That means we're much better able to target our approach to improving soil and plant health," explains Dr. Goyer.

Using NGS, Dr. Goyer was able to demonstrate that the addition of different compost sources to soil under potato crops changed soil properties. This spectacular increase in soil organic matter and change in bacterial and fungal community diversity could still be observed a year after application. She was also able to demonstrate that many of the microbes living in the composts were still present in soils up to a year after the compost had been applied. This was an unexpected result, as it was previously thought that microbes living in compost did not survive in the soil.

Ultimately, scientists like Dr. Goyer hope to better harness the power of microbial communities to improve soil health, plant productivity, and to decrease losses from plant disease. Cultivating more beneficial microbial communities may also lead to a decrease in the amount of fertilizer and pesticides required to grow crops.

For scientists, there's no such thing as too much data. "What we're learning with NGS will help us zero in on the specific microorganisms that might be used as indicators of soil and plant health, as well organisms that could be used as biofertilizers or biopesticides," says Dr. Goyer. "It's the knowledge we need to ensure sustainable agricultural practices well into the future."