Evaluation of Edaphic Microbial Ammonium Oxidizing Communities during a Yellow Potato Cycle Culture

This study evaluated the ammonium oxidizing communities (COA) associated with a potato crop (Solanum phureja) rhizosphere soil in the savannah of Bogotá (Colombia) by examining the presence and abundance of amoA enzyme genes and transcripts by qPCR and next-generation sequence analysis. amoA gene abundance could not be quantified by qPCR due to problems inherent in the primers; however, the melting curve analysis detected increased fluorescence for Bacterial communities but not for Archaeal communities. Transcriptome analysis by next-generation sequencing revealed that the majority of reads mapped to ammonium-oxidizing Archaea, suggesting that this activity is primarily governed by the microbial group of the Crenarchaeota phylum. In contrast,a lower number of reads mapped to ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Overall design: Transcriptome of rhizosphere soil from the potato (Solanum phureja) crop, samples were collected at various growth stages: 20 days after planting (emergence), 50 days after planting (hilling) and 90 days after planting (flower advent); three potato plants with root–soil systems were randomly sampled as biological replicates for each growth stage.