Brajesh K. Singh

Brajesh Kumar Singh (born 13 January 1973) is a scientist specialising in ecosystem ecology, agriculture, and soil science. He is a professor at Hawkesbury Institute for Environment and Director of Global Centre for Land-Based Innovation at Western Sydney University, Australia. https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/gclbi Through his fundamental research, his work identifies the quantitative relationships between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functions and how natural/anthropogenic pressures such as global change affect this. His applied research harnesses the knowledge gained in fundamental research to achieve increased farm productivity, sustainable development, environmental protection and food security.
He is an elected fellow of American Academy of Microbiology and was awarded Humboldt Research Award in 2018. In 2020, The Reuters have recognized him as a world’s top climate scientist – 2021.https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/climate-change-scientists-list/ Stanford university ranked him among top scientists of the world in Microbiology -2020.
Singh serves on High-Level Expert Group (HLEG) of European Commission, to assess the needs, options, impacts and possible approach for an International Platform for Food Systems Science (IPFSS),https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/new-high-level-expert-group-assess-need-international-platform-food-systems-science-2021-feb-17_en and provides expert advice on International Bioeconomy Forum. He was a lead and coordinating author of the State of Knowledge of Soil biodiversity - jointly prepared by multiple United Nation organisations including Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) Global Soil Partnership (GSP).http://www.fao.org/3/cb1928en/cb1928en.pdf
Singh is President and a founder of the Global Initiative on Crop Microbiome and Sustainable Agriculture, a not-for-profit organisation that provided coordinated approach and connectivity for sustainable farming and protection of environmental health across the globe.https://www.globalsustainableagriculture.org
== Research Career ==
Singh received his PhD from Imperial College, London (UK) in 2003 and served as a research scientist at Macaulay Institute (2002-2010). He moved to Western Sydney University in 2010 where his research is supported by a combination of government (e.g Australian Research Council), industry (e.g. Cotton Research and Development Corporation), international agencies (e.g. European Commission). 
Singh studies are global in nature, and he is a strong proponent of collaborative research. He explicitly recognises the critical contribution of external and internal collaborators, and young career research scientists in his laboratory who often drive the research activities. He is also a strong supporter of socially and environmentally responsible research.
He is the Editor-in Chief for Journal of Sustainable Agriculture and Environment and serve on editorial boards of multiple other journals.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/2767035x
== Research Theme ==
=== Linking soil biodiversity to ecosystem function from micro-scale to global scales ===
Singh’s research focuses on providing empirical evidence for strong linkage between soil biodiversity and ecosystem functions and how is this relationship is influenced human activities and what are consequences for the resilience of different ecosystem. To generate such knowledge he combines emerging tools including metagenomics data, bioinformatics, satellite tools, artificial intelligence, and statistical modelling. 
His previous work demonstrated that functional redundancy in soil microbial communities is overstated, and loss of microbial diversity leads to direct and proportional loss of ecosystem functions from local to global scales.Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Maestre, F.T., Reich, P.B., Jeffries, T.C., Gaitan, J.J., Encinar, D., Berdugo, M., Campbell, C.D. and Singh, B.K., 2016. Microbial diversity drives multifunctionality in terrestrial ecosystems. Nature communications, 7(1), pp.1-8. Trivedi, C., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Hamonts, K., Lai, K., Reich, P.B. and Singh, B.K., 2019. Losses in microbial functional diversity reduce the rate of key soil processes. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 135, pp.267-274. In later studies, his studies demonstrated that ecosystem functions including primary productivity is influenced by interactions between different soil communities (e.g. microbes, fauna and plant roots) at regional and global scales.Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Reich, P.B., Bardgett, R.D., Eldridge, D.J., Lambers, H., Wardle, D.A., Reed, S.C., Plaza, C., Png, G.K., Neuhauser, S. and Berhe, A.A., 2020. The influence of soil age on ecosystem structure and function across biomes. Nature communications, 11(1), pp.1-14. His research provided evidence that microbial diversity and abundances are vulnerable to climate change (e.g. increasing aridity) at the global scale and the loss of microbial diversity proportionally decreases ecosystem functions both at microcosm and global scales.Trivedi, C., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Hamonts, K., Lai, K., Reich, P.B. and Singh, B.K., 2019. Losses in microbial functional diversity reduce the rate of key soil processes. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 135, pp.267-274.Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Reich, P.B., Trivedi, C., Eldridge, D.J., Abades, S., Alfaro, F.D., Bastida, F., Berhe, A.A., Cutler, N.A., Gallardo, A. and García-Velázquez, L., 2020. Multiple elements of soil biodiversity drive ecosystem functions across biomes. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(2), pp.210-220.
=== Mapping and predicting soil microbiomes. ===
Soil microbial communities are vastly diverse. Simultaneously exploiting all of them either to understand ecological mechanisms or to enhance ecosystem functions is not feasible. Working with global partners, Singh’s research in 2018 and 2019, provided evidence that less than 2% of fungal and bacterial taxa account for nearly half of the soil microbial communities across the globe.Egidi, E., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Plett, J.M., Wang, J., Eldridge, D.J., Bardgett, R.D., Maestre, F.T. and Singh, B.K., 2019. A few Ascomycota taxa dominate soil fungal communities worldwide. Nature communications, 10(1), pp.1-9. Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Oliverio, A.M., Brewer, T.E., Benavent-González, A., Eldridge, D.J., Bardgett, R.D., Maestre, F.T., Singh, B.K. and Fierer, N., 2018. A global atlas of the dominant bacteria found in soil. Science, 359(6373), pp.320-325. This provides a ‘most wanted’ list that guides future research into the study and manipulation of microorganisms that affect ecosystem functions.
=== Climate Change Ecology ===
Singh proposes a framework to explicitly include microbial contribution, and feedback responses to improve prediction and mitigation of climate changeCavicchioli, R., Ripple, W.J., Timmis, K.N., Azam, F., Bakken, L.R., Baylis, M., Behrenfeld, M.J., Boetius, A., Boyd, P.W., Classen, A.T. and Crowther, T.W., 2019. Scientists’ warning to humanity: microorganisms and climate change. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 17(9), pp.569-586. Singh, B.K., Bardgett, R.D., Smith, P. and Reay, D.S., 2010. Microorganisms and climate change: terrestrial feedbacks and mitigation options. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 8(11), pp.779-790. and provided experimental evidence for the above framework at the global scale on microbial feedback response to global warming. Karhu, K., Auffret, M.D., Dungait, J.A., Hopkins, D.W., Prosser, J.I., Singh, B.K., Subke, J.A., Wookey, P.A., Ågren, G.I., Sebastia, M.T. and Gouriveau, F., 2014. Temperature sensitivity of soil respiration rates enhanced by microbial community response. Nature, 513(7516), pp.81-84. In 2020, he co-authored a paper to demonstrate that mature forest has limited capability to absorb additional atmospheric CO2 mainly due to rapid soil respiration.Jiang, M., Medlyn, B.E., Drake, J.E., Duursma, R.A., Anderson, I.C., Barton, C.V., Boer, M.M., Carrillo, Y., Castañeda-Gómez, L., Collins, L. and Crous, K.Y., 2020. The fate of carbon in a mature forest under carbon dioxide enrichment. Nature, 580(7802), pp.227-231. Singh research also examines the extent to which soil microbiome controls emission of other greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide) and approaches to harness this mitigate change.Nazaries, L., Pan, Y., Bodrossy, L., Baggs, E.M., Millard, P., Murrell, J.C. and Singh, B.K., 2013. Evidence of microbial regulation of biogeochemical cycles from a study on methane flux and land use change. Applied and environmental microbiology, 79(13), pp.4031-4040. Hu, H.W., Trivedi, P., He, J.Z. and Singh, B.K., 2017. Microbial nitrous oxide emissions in dryland ecosystems: mechanisms, microbiome and mitigation. Environmental microbiology, 19(12), pp.4808-4828.
=== Microbiome tools for sustainable agriculture and industrial products ===
Singh research has proposedTrivedi, P., Leach, J.E., Tringe, S.G., Sa, T. and Singh, B.K., 2020. Plant–microbiome interactions: from community assembly to plant health. Nature reviews microbiology, 18(11), pp.607-621. Singh, B.K., Trivedi, P., Egidi, E., Macdonald, C.A. and Delgado-Baquerizo, M., 2020. Crop microbiome and sustainable agriculture. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 18(11), pp.601-602. and provided evidence that soil microbiome directly impacts plant microbiome assembly Hamonts, K., Trivedi, P., Garg, A., Janitz, C., Grinyer, J., Holford, P., Botha, F.C., Anderson, I.C. and Singh, B.K., 2018. Field study reveals core plant microbiota and relative importance of their drivers. Environmental microbiology, 20(1), pp.124-140.Xiong, C., Zhu, Y.G., Wang, J.T., Singh, B., Han, L.L., Shen, J.P., Li, P.P., Wang, G.B., Wu, C.F., Ge, A.H. and Zhang, L.M., 2021. Host selection shapes crop microbiome assembly and network complexity. New Phytologist, 229(2), pp.1091-1104. that is also shaped by plant species identity, which in turn have impact on farm productivity and ecosystem health. He proposed to harness system/ holobiont approaches of sustainable agriculture.Qiu, Z., Egidi, E., Liu, H., Kaur, S. and Singh, B.K., 2019. New frontiers in agriculture productivity: Optimised microbial inoculants and in situ microbiome engineering. Biotechnology advances, 37(6), p.107371. He utilises multiple tools (e.g. machine learning, statistical and mathematic modelling) to upscale findings from microscopic to global scales (e.g. prediction of soil-borne plant pathogen under climate change Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Guerra, C.A., Cano-Díaz, C., Egidi, E., Wang, J.T., Eisenhauer, N., Singh, B.K. and Maestre, F.T., 2020. The proportion of soil-borne pathogens increases with warming at the global scale. Nature Climate Change, 10(6), pp.550-554., and others. Trivedi, P., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Trivedi, C., Hamonts, K., Anderson, I.C. and Singh, B.K., 2017. Keystone microbial taxa regulate the invasion of a fungal pathogen in agro-ecosystems. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 111, pp.10-14.Trivedi, P., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Anderson, I.C. and Singh, B.K., 2016. Response of soil properties and microbial communities to agriculture: implications for primary productivity and soil health indicators. Frontiers in Plant Science, 7, p.990.
Category:Scientists