Impact of flooding on the soil microbiota
Anand Shah, Shreya Shah, Vishal Shah
Abstract
The ability of the microbiota present in agricultural soil to recover post-flooding is not known. In the current project, sandy loam and planting soil were flooded for various time points and after flooding, incubated for three weeks. The bacterial communities in the soil samples were analyzed using the Illumina Miseq® platform. Statistical analysis of the microbiota between the control and flooded soil show that there is no statistical difference between the two (p > 0.05). Total richness in the control and flooded soil were also compared. Again, no statistical difference was observed (p > 0.05). Based on the observed results, we conclude that the microbiota in the soil is very resilient to flooding and can recover within three weeks of incubation.