Microbial Genome Diversity and Microbial Genome Sequencing

The role of microbiome in agroecosystems has evolved due to improvements in microbial diversity analysis methods. The journey of microbial diversity estimation progressed from culture-dependent to culture-independent methods. The culture-dependent methods are important in finding the microbial diversity of different environments; however, they are immensely biased toward the dominant microorganisms present in a community. With the advancement in sequencing techniques and genomics, the community exploration using culture-independent methods has commenced a new understanding of microbial interactions with their surroundings. Molecular studies of different environmental communities have uncovered <1% of the total number of prokaryotic species representing the cultivable fraction. This chapter summarizes the different methods to acquire a microbial diversity that may eventually enhance plant growth in sustainable agriculture and may often play a role in the management of environmental problems. The merits and demerits of the commonly used molecular methods to investigate microbial communities are discussed. The potential applications of next-generation sequencing techniques for a comprehensive assessment of microbial diversity have been illustrated.