Understanding the potential link between spatial heterogeneity of soybean yields and associated soil/root microbial communities

Site to site yield variation within a farm is a common yield limiting factor. This phenomenon negatively impacts the attainable crop yields at individual farm level. Most studies have attempted to attribute such site scale yield variations to soil chemical, physical, and topological features while some investigations have looked into soil biological factors as well. Nonetheless, use of amplicon sequencing to understand the potential relationship between site scale spatial variation of crop yields and soil microbial communities is spares. Here we are trying to uncover the link between spatial variation of soybean yield and soil fungal/bacterial communities through bacterial 16s rRNA and fungal ITS rRNA amplicon sequencing.