Biochar influences the microbial community structure during manure composting with agricultural wastes

Contrasting effects of biochar versus manure on soil microbial communities and enzyme activities in an Aridisol

“…Other researchers have suggested that biochar benefits microbial communities by enhancing the physical and chemical soil characteristics (Lehmann and Joseph 2009;Atkinson et al, 2010;Jindo et al, 2012), providing suitable habitats for microorganisms that protect them from predation (Pietikäinen et al, 2000), supplying labile C substrates for degradation (Thies and Rillig, 2009;Smith et al, 2010), enhancing the availability of macro-nutrients such as N and P (Atkinson et al, 2010;Lammirato et al, 2011), or sorbing compounds that would otherwise inhibit microbial growth (Kasozi et al,2010). To date, these mechanisms have been poorly studied and are mainly discussed in terms as possible explanations.…”

Dynamics of microbial community composition and soil organic carbon mineralization in soil following addition of pyrogenic and fresh organic matter

“…Recent research has only begun to identify PyOM effects on soil microbial communities, and it is clear that PyOM additions to soil can induce changes in soil microbial community composition. Most current evidence has been gathered using fingerprinting approaches, such as terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (Bingeman et al, 1953;Jin, 2010;Kolton et al, 2011) or denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (Kolton et al, 2011;Chen et al, 2013), or by surveying phospholipid fatty acids to assess microbial diversity at low phylogenetic resolution (Dunavin, 1969;Jindo et al, 2012;Gomez et al, 2014;Watzinger et al, 2014;Mitchell et al, 2015). In addition, clone libraries targeting functional genes (Song et al, 2014) and some highthroughput DNA sequencing approaches have been applied to survey microorganisms in PyOM systems.…”

Biochar affects soil organic matter cycling and microbial functions but does not alter microbial community structure in a paddy soil

“…All these studies suggested that SOM cycling might be influenced via microorganisms after BC addition. A number of studies reported changes in the microbial community after BC addition that were attributed to the physico-chemical properties of BC (e.g., aeration, sorption), as well as BC-induced changes in soil properties such as pH (Gul et al, 2015;Jindo et al, 2012;Rillig et al, 2010;Xu et al, 2014). However, information on microbial communities associated with soil SOM dynamics related to BC amendment is particularly limited (Gul et al, 2015).…”