Preconditioning Biochar-Bacterial analyses

This study was designed to assess the influence of pre-conditioning biochar media on plant health and on bacterial and fungal community structure, diversity, and microbial activity. We sampled three independent replicates soil samples from four main treatments (i) non-conditioned biochar-free substrate (NCS-CON), ii) non-conditioned biochar-amended substrate (NCS-GHW), iii) pre-conditioned biochar-free substrate (PCS-CON), and iv) pre-conditioned biochar-amended substrate (PCS-GHW). To determine the effect of biochar treatments on the diversity and composition of bacterial and fungal 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 and using the ITS1F and ITS2 primer sets for fungi ITS1 gene. Fastq files of 24 (12-bacterial and 12-fungal analyses) libraries were produced as a result of Illumina MiSeq technology at the Research Resources Center of the University of Illinois at Chicago.