Bangladesh heavily relies on intensive agriculture for food security, rural development, and poverty alleviation. Despite developing soil maps for all agroecological zones (AEZs) based on physico-chemical properties, the microbiome, key to nutrient cycling, soil productivity, and greenhouse gas dynamics, remains largely overlooked. Better understanding of microbial diversity across 30 AEZs in Bangladesh is critical for adopting strategies for sustainable agriculture and mitigation of climate change.  Our team for the first time determined the diversity and abundance of soil bacteriome of of Bangladesh. 

From 14 composite soil samples, 7,199,364 raw reads were obtained, averaging 514,240 per sample. After quality filtering, 343,166 reads (4.77%) were assigned to 544 bacterial OTUs . Using the SILVA v.138 database, these 544 OTUs were taxonomically assigned to 16 bacterial phyla, 45 classes, 77 orders, 151 families, and 341 genera. The soil sample from AEZ-4 exhibited the highest number of OTUs, while the lowest number of OTUs was observed in AEZ-28 (Table 1). Across all AEZs, Gemmata (12.11%) was identified as the top abundant genus followed by Planctomyces (8.83%), Nocardioides (6.11%), Anaerolinea (5.28%), Candidatus (4.80%), Solibacter (4.34%), Bacillus (3.72%), Clostridium (3.60%), Rhodoplanes (3.51%), and Pirellula (3.46%). The rest of the bacterial genera had <3.0% relative abundances. This amplicon sequencing of AEZ soil bacteriomes provides a foundation for studying soil microbiome functions, fertility, productivity, and greenhouse gas dynamics to support sustainable crop production in Bangladesh.

We are interested in mapping Bangladesh soils microbiome using shotgun metagenomics, machine learning and AI. Our ultimate target is to improve soil health of Bangladesh using microbiome engineering. We welcome collaborators and donors in this mammoth task!

Source: https://doi.org/10.1128/mra.01237-24