Sampling started in May 2024. Barley roots were collected from eight locations across Italy (Orsaria and Basiliano, Fiume Veneto, and Piacenza d’Adige) and Austria (Oberhofen, Mieming and Imst). The ~7 kg of barley roots obtained have been treated to recover the rhizosphere: the microbial flora that inhabits the portion of soil in close contact with the root.
An estimate of the bacterial flora was also made, resulting in more than 1011 live bacterial cells. This value is an estimate as it only considers the bacterial population that can be cultivated in the conditions adopted in the laboratory. Uncultivable bacterial flora and the fungal part of the cells are not used. Nonetheless, the biodiversity that emerged from this simple cultivation was surprising and reinforces CEDRIC’s idea that moving or “transplanting” complex samples, such as the microbiome en masse, can have enormous potential compared to the inoculation in seeds or soil of one or few microbial strains.
We are all curious to proceed with more in-depth analyses on the biodiversity of our samples, to be carried out with Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. These will allow us to draw a complete list of the bacterial and fungal genera and species present in our samples, highlighting the level of biodiversity and their peculiarities.