Recovery of prokaryotic community in two soils with soil powder inoculum following gamma irradiation

Gamma irradiation at a dose of 6kGy has been proposed for partial sterilization of soil to selectively eliminate target organisms (e.g., nematode community), but the effects of this treatment on the non- target organisms, and specifically on the soil prokaryote community, are unknown. We investigated the effect of gamma irradiation (6kGy) on the prokaryotic community (bacteria and archaea) of a silt loam and a loamy sand soil 1 and 12 weeks after irradiation by means of 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. We further investigated whether inoculation of soil powder (SP) from the same soils would stimulate the recovery of the prokaryotic community from this partial sterilization.