ASSESSING SOIL HEALTH WITH AID OF INACTIVE MICROBIAL POOL AND SOIL MICROBIAL EXPANDING POTENTIAL

Assessing soil biological function and health accurately is a very tedious and challenging task as deducing highly diverse soil microbial species function using any single indicator is not conceivable. Moreover, each microbial cell within microbial species is hypothetically in different stages of their life cycle and so metabolically different from each other. Many soil health indicators are available but the variability in space and time is very high and does not provide specific and accurate information on soil biological functions. In this context, we propose the use of inactive microbial cells as biological health indicators with justification. Soil Microbial Expansion i.e. inability of the soil to encourage microbial growth in response to any particular stress environmental factor and then activate microbial growth whenever favourable environmental conditions may serve as a soil health indicator and this parameter may not fluctuate high as compared to the active microbial cell for predicting soil function. We also propose the calibration of soil inactive microbial pool function which may be highly useful for the scientist elsewhere, working on soil microbial ecology and diversity.