Methods for Exploring Soil Microbial Diversity

Belowground microbial processes are at the helm of terrestrial ecosystem functions, and the enormous diversity of soil microorganisms acts as a key player. Thus, understanding the community dynamics of microorganisms in the soil is essential to know their distribution, abundance, and structure. Further, it is also important to know how these communities are shaped in structure and function in response to changes in space and time. Various microbial diversity analysis methods—fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms, and the automated version of ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis, RISA (ARISA)—have been developed to analyse the diversity of soil microorganisms based on their genetic structure. However, methods such as phospholipid and fatty acid analysis utilise the differences in lipid components of the microbial cell membrane to analyse their diversity. In the present chapter, we explore the conventional methods of soil microbial diversity analysis.