Characterizing the soil microbiome under different regenerative agriculture versus conventional agriculture practices. Soil Samples

This is a pilot study which aims to carry out physiochemical characterization and bacterial and fungal profiling of soil subjected to different regenerative/organic agriculture practices adopted by different farmers over different lengths of time. The primary hypothesis is that the bacterial and fungal population residing in soil is responsible for carrying out various biogeochemical pro-cesses which determine the soil health. A good quality soil will have bacterial and fungal strains that will fix nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals in the soil contributing to healthy plant growth and good productivity. Further, different crops also contribute to different bacterial and fungal pool. On the contrary chemical fertilizers and pesticides deteriorate soil health by making it acidic and reducing its water holding capacity leading to poor plant growth and yield. The study will characterize the bacterial and fungal population found in vegetable and ragi crop growing fields in some of the regenerative agriculture practices and compare with the conventional chemical methods. We anticipate that the best bacterial and fungal profile contain-ing land will demonstrate healthy crop growth, high productivity, and less water demand. This study will help to identify bacterial and fungal markers for vegetable and ragi crops that contrib-ute to healthy soil profile. This study aims to inform policy on soil management practices for ef-fective farming