Microbial diversity in soils cultivated with sugarcane in the State of São Paulo: a biogeographic approach

Abstract

The sugarcane is the most important agricultural issue in the State of Sao Paulo, where the agro-climatic map describe the existence of two regions with distinct environmental conditions, where this crop can be cultivated, besides a new area, recently occupied by these plantations. However, with the expansion of the agriculture frontiers, a higher productivity and sustainability in the sugarcane production is highly desirable. In this context, among other factors, the role of the microbial community in the sugarcane field soils might be important, helping on the improvement of plant development, supplying it with nutrients or inhibiting the occurrence of diseases and pests. However, little is known about the microbial community residing in soils where sugarcane is cultivated. Then, this project has the aim to describe, in a biogeographic approach, the microbial diversity existing in soils used for sugarcane plantations in the State of Sao Paulo, encompassing the groups of archaea, bacteria and fungi. It is proposed to quantify these communities by quantitative real time PCR (qPCR), to analyze the structure of such communities by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP), and to determine the phylogeny of such organisms by pyrosequencing of phylogenetic genes found in targeted organisms. In this purpose, two types of samplings will be carried out aiming: i) to compare the variation on the microbial communities in macro-scale, among different areas describe in the agricultural map; ii) to obtain patterns in micro-scale of these communities, within each area demarked by the sugarcane cultivation map. At last, the microbiological data will be correlated with physico-chemical characteristics of the soils, resulting in a biogeographic approach of the analyzed soils, generating a microbiological map of the soils cultivated with sugarcane in the State of São Paulo. (AU)