The Importance of Soil Microorganisms in Regulating Soil Health

ABSTRACT

Soil is an important reservoir of innumerable natural and biological resources fundamental to the sustainability of life and the earth’s functionality. The soil is complex due to changing biodiversity, physicochemical characteristics, disturbances, and pedogenesis, which are constituent indices required for the measurement of its healthiness. Hence, there is a need to concertedly protect the soil by consciously promoting practices and behaviors that optimize its priority functions in delivering ecosystem services. It is further significant for crop yield, hence the need to pay more attention to its health. Soil healthiness is also a reflection of its capacity to support biogeochemical processes, abiotic communities, and plant and animal productions. However, agronomic studies, until recently, focused more on the use of chemical indicators in determining soil health, despite the versatile ecophysiological role of microorganisms in soil formation, resource cycling, and management. These biological phenomena expressed by soil microbial communities form the basis for the conversion of diverse organic matters into bioutilizable resources for plants’ healthy development. This review, therefore, explored the underlining mechanisms, particularly climate change-related, that caused divergent soil properties and how this impacted the microbial composition of healthy soil. Likewise, several pieces of agronomic literature on the physical characteristics, ecological services, and functions of a healthy soil were compared toward innovative best management practices for improving soil health.

KEYWORDS:

• Agronomy
• agriculture
• climate change
• soil health
• soil microorganisms

Acknowledgements

OOB acknowledges the National Research Foundation, South Africa grants (UID123634 and UID132595) that support research in our laboratory.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).