Abstract:
In agroecosystems, microbial communities play a crucial role in delivery of various
ecosystem services. These microbial communities are affected by several factors
such as soil physicochemical properties which contribute to the diversity of
bacterial and fungal communities. In this study, we investigated the soil
physicochemical parameters and the diversity and abundance of bacterial and
fungal communities in rhizospheric soil collected from banana growing regions in
Kisii, Nyamira and Embu Counties of Kenya. Rhizospheric soil samples from the
three regions showed significant differences at (P= 0.01) with the lowest recorded
pH being 4.43 in Embu County. Based on Next-generation sequencing results,
there was a significant diversity and abundance of bacterial division Proteobacteria
while the predominant fungal division was basidiomycota, Several genera in the
fungal division such as Penicillium and Cladosporium as well as bacterial genera
such as Acidobacterium and Pseudomonas sp. were those associated with soil.
There were several plant pathogenic and beneficial bacteria and fungi. Based on
redundancy analysis (RDA) the distribution of these microbes was affected
negatively by soil parameters such as total organic carbon (TOC) and pH. In
conclusion, Soil health and continuous mono-cropping systems play a
significant role in the diversity and abundance of both beneficial and harmful soil
microbes. Metagenomics approaches in studying microbial communities in
agroecosystems is a revolutionary approach which will aid in the development
of sustainable tools in agriculture that improve microbiome structures as well as
overall productivity.
