Reference number : GC-2017-Q4-00518, amendment number : , agreement type : G, recipient legal name : Dunfield, Kari (University of Guelph), recipient country : CA, recipient province : nan, recipient city : Ontario, recipient postal code : nan, program name english : Collaborative Research and Development Grants - Project, program name french : Subventions de recherche et développement coopérative - projet, program purpose english : Healthy soils provide a variety of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, supporting plant growth, regulating water storage and quality, and climate and erosion control. Agricultural soils which are not healthy may produce less high-quality food or fibre, and this may result in economic losses. The living organisms in soils are a key component in regulating ecosystem services, and can be studied in a variety of ways, most notably via sequencing of DNA barcodes (gene regions) that can be used to distinguish different organisms within large taxonomic groups such as soil bacteria, fungi, protists, plants, and soil insects (a process known as 'biomonitoring'). There are some gaps in our knowledge concerning how soil organisms regulate soil health, and this project aims to fill those gaps. Knowledge gaps include: (i) we lack a baseline measurement for the profile of soil organisms in agricultural soils, which is needed to establish whether farming practices such as the use of enteric seed coatings affect soil organisms that regulate soil health (ii) we lack good databases for plant weed and pest DNA barcodes for use in biomonitoring of agricultural soils, and (iii) we need to be able to link the diversity of different groups of soil organisms to specific soil ecosystem services of greatest impact on farming, such as nitrogen and phosphorus (fertilizer) nutrient cycling. We aim to fill these knowledge gaps using long-term field trials at Ridgetown (cover crops and residue retention), Elora (Conservation tillage and crop rotation) and Woodslee (crop rotation), taking samples over the course of each growing season for several years. We will use both a variety of established soil health indicators and soil quality tests (such as soil structure, bulk density, organic matter content, pH, salinity, and others), and molecular biology techniques (including biomonitoring) aimed at profiling (i) soil bacteria and archaea (ii) metazoan protists (iii) plants, including weeds, and (iv) soil fungi. Standard morphological as well as DNA barcoding techniques will also be applied to soil insects. We will analyze the collected data on soil quality and soil organism diversity using state-of-the art bioinformatic and statistical methods, in order to fill each knowledge gap._x000D_
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_x000D_, program purpose french : Healthy soils provide a variety of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, supporting plant growth, regulating water storage and quality, and climate and erosion control. Agricultural soils which are not healthy may produce less high-quality food or fibre, and this may result in economic losses. The living organisms in soils are a key component in regulating ecosystem services, and can be studied in a variety of ways, most notably via sequencing of DNA barcodes (gene regions) that can be used to distinguish different organisms within large taxonomic groups such as soil bacteria, fungi, protists, plants, and soil insects (a process known as 'biomonitoring'). There are some gaps in our knowledge concerning how soil organisms regulate soil health, and this project aims to fill those gaps. Knowledge gaps include: (i) we lack a baseline measurement for the profile of soil organisms in agricultural soils, which is needed to establish whether farming practices such as the use of enteric seed coatings affect soil organisms that regulate soil health (ii) we lack good databases for plant weed and pest DNA barcodes for use in biomonitoring of agricultural soils, and (iii) we need to be able to link the diversity of different groups of soil organisms to specific soil ecosystem services of greatest impact on farming, such as nitrogen and phosphorus (fertilizer) nutrient cycling. We aim to fill these knowledge gaps using long-term field trials at Ridgetown (cover crops and residue retention), Elora (Conservation tillage and crop rotation) and Woodslee (crop rotation), taking samples over the course of each growing season for several years. We will use both a variety of established soil health indicators and soil quality tests (such as soil structure, bulk density, organic matter content, pH, salinity, and others), and molecular biology techniques (including biomonitoring) aimed at profiling (i) soil bacteria and archaea (ii) metazoan protists (iii) plants, including weeds, and (iv) soil fungi. Standard morphological as well as DNA barcoding techniques will also be applied to soil insects. We will analyze the collected data on soil quality and soil organism diversity using state-of-the art bioinformatic and statistical methods, in order to fill each knowledge gap._x000D_
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_x000D_, agreement title english : Developing genomics tools as indicators of soil health and sustainable productive agriculture, agreement title french : Developing genomics tools as indicators of soil health and sustainable productive agriculture, agreement number : CRDPJ, agreement value : 474887.0, agreement start date : 2018-03-07, agreement end date : nan, description english : nan, description french : nan, expected results english : nan, expected results french : nan, additional information english : Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)., additional information french : Subvention ou bourse octroyée s'appliquant à plus d'un exercice financier (2017-2018 à 2022-2023)., owner organization : nserc-crsng, owner organization title : Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada | Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada