Intra- and inter-annual variability of nitrification in the rhizosphere of field-grown biomass sorghum. Soil meta genome

Our main research question was focused on interactions between fertilizer and soil habitat on nitrogen soil transformations/leaching with an emphasis on the relationship between the biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) potential of Sorghum bicolor and soil microbial communities. A field of bioenergy Sorghum bicolor was planted in a split-plot design with 5 additional experimental factors. Experimental factors included Plot nested within Block (4 levels), Genotype (4 levels in 2018; 1 level in 2019), Sample date (3 levels), soil fraction/habitat (2 levels bulk and rhizosphere), and fertilizer in kg N ha-1 (2 levels in 2018; 4 levels in 2019). Bulk and rhizosphere soil samples were collected from the field for each genotype across three sampling dates in the years 2018 and 2019. DNA was extracted from samples using a QIAGEN powersoil kit and QIAcube HT machine. Samples were submitted to the University if Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center for 16S sequencing on the Illumina NovaSeq platform.