Soil metagenomics in grasslands and forests – A review and bibliometric analysis

Abstract Metagenomics methods enable the determination of the microbial community found in an environment, and the study of microbial diversity and function. These techniques accelerated the study of the soil microbiome, an important component for global nutrient cycling in diverse ecosystems, including forests and grasslands. We performed a review and bibliometric analysis based on scientific studies published between 2000 and 2019, using the online tools provided by Clarivate analysis - Web of Science Core Collection database. We set up to identify research trends revolving around soil metagenomics in forest and grassland ecosystems, particularly those related with management regimes. Our results showed a rapid growth in the number of papers and a growing interest among the scientific community. Diversity of soil microbial communities was the prime subject addressed for both ecosystems. In top papers, commercial kit extraction methods were preferred, the main NGS technique was pyrosequencing, with Illumina systems gaining traction in the last decade, and bacterial communities were the most studied. This field of research showed a higher average number of citations per paper than related research topics, such as microbiology or environment/ecology. Understanding functional diversity and the ecological and applied potential of soil microbiomes is one of the current trends in soil metagenomics studies.