Advances in Soil Microbiology: Recent Trends and Future Prospects, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2018 Volume 1: Soil-Microbe Interaction Microorganisms for Sustainability Series, Vol. 3

This book presents a comprehensive collection of articles illustrating the importance of microbial community structure and function for ecosystem sustainability and environmental reclamation. It addresses a diverse range of topics, including microbial diversity, physiology, genomics, ecosystem function, interaction, metabolism, and the fruitful use of microbial communities for crop productivity and environmental remediation. 

In addition, the book explores issues ranging from general concepts on the diversity of microorganisms in soil, and ecosystem function to the evolution and taxonomy of soil microbiota, with future prospects. It covers cutting-edge methods in soil microbial ecological studies, rhizosphere microflora, the role of organic matter in plant productivity, biological nitrogen fixation and its genetics, microbial transformation of plant nutrients in soil, plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria, and organic matter transformation. 

The book also discusses the application of microbes in biodegradation of xenobiotic contaminants. It covers bio-fertilizers and their role in sustainable agriculture and soil health, biological control of insect pests and plant pathogens, and the latest tools of omics in soil microbiology, i.e. genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics, which offer pioneering approaches to the exploration of microbial structure and function.

Chapter 1: Soil Microbiology in the coming decades (Adhya).- Chapter 2: Molecular genomic techniques for identification of soil microbial community structure and dynamics (Dhiraj Paul).- Chapter 3: “Omics” tools in Soil microbiology: The state of the art (Angana Sarkar).- Chapter 4: Diversity of sulfur oxidizing and reducing microbes in diverse ecosystems (Upendra Kumar).- Chapter 5: Microbial cycling of arsenic in the aquifers of Bengal delta plain (BDP) (Punyasloke Bhadury).- Chapter 6: Bacterial communities of Uranium contaminated tailing ponds and their interactions with different heavy metals (Paltu Kumar Dhal).- Chapter 7: Microbial cycling of greenhouse gases and their impact on climate change (Santosh Ranjan Mohanty).- Chapter 8: Microbe Mediated Bioremediation: An Ecofriendly Sustainable Approach for Environmental Clean-Up (Seema Sangwan).- Chapter 9: Remediation of oily sludge and oil contaminated soil from petroleum industry.- Chapter 10: Microbial soil enzymes (Swati Joshi).- Chapter 11: Biosurfactants in soil bioremediation (Vivek Rangarajan).

Dr. Tapan kumar Adhya is currently the Director, South Asia Nitrogen Centre, New Delhi and also working as Professor in the School of Biotechnology, KIIT University, Bhubneswar, Odisha, India. He has more than 150 publications and 30 book chapters.

Mr. Balaram Mohapatra is currently doing Phd from IIT Kharagpur, India. 

Dr. Dhiraj Paul DST is presently working as young scientist, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune, India.

Mr. Subhasis Das is presently working in Environmental and Industrial Biotechnology Division TERI-The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, India.

A one-stop-shop for fundamentals of soil microbiology as well as its applications

Comprehensively covers recent technologies for study of microbial diversity and function

Contains an update on genomic inventory of plant beneficial microorganisms

Enriches the understanding on use of microbes in environmental cleanup as a sustainable approach