Linking the Belowground Microbial Composition, Diversity and Activity to Soilborne Disease Suppression and Growth Promotion of Tomato Amended with Biochar

This study was designed to establish the relationship between biochar-induced changes in rhizosphere microbial community structure, taxon-functional diversity, and microbial activity with soilborne disease suppression and enhanced plant performance in a comprehensive fashion. We sampled four independent replicates soil samples. To determine the effect of biochar treatments on the diversity and composition of root associated bacterial communities we applied a high-throughput sequencing-based protocol that targets PCR-generated amplicons from the variable regions V4 of the 16S rRNA gene using the bacterial primer set 515F/806R. Fastq files of 8 libraries were produced as a result of Illumina MiSeq technology at the Research Resources Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago.