This is a textbook on soil and plant microbiology written by a leading French practitioner who has extensive field experience in tropical and Mediterranean agriculture, particularly in the study of diseases caused by soil-borne fungi. That background explains much about the content of the book. It is certainly well-written, is comprehensive, has good plates and diagrams and has been extensively referenced and contains useful suggestions for further reading.
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1, ‘The Soil Medium’ covers inert components, living components and effect of environment on micro-organisms. Each section is neatly divided and sub-divided. ‘The Effects of Micro-organisms’ is the subject of Part 2. Here there are sections on modifications of physio-chemical characteristics of the environment due to effect of micro-organisms, interactions between micro-organisms, and interactions between micro-organisms and plants. The final part is ‘Possibilities of Intervention’ and covers the topics of why intervene, interventions against unfavourable organisms, and utilization of auxiliary micro-organisms.
The slight complication is that the French edition was written in 1996 but the author updated it for the English edition in 2001, which has a copyright imprint of 2004. I mention all this because the flavour of the book, which I admire, is nevertheless of a 1996 vintage. In comparison with books produced at about the same time it is an extremely good competitor. It has plenty of practical advice and is also amply illustrated, even with some colour plates, and I am well aware that the book has reached an extensive student market in France. It certainly covers the topics that I tried to teach my own students in that period and I would have been very pleased to have an English edition of the textbook at the time. The complication to all this, however, is that since 1996, soil and plant microbiology has advanced dramatically, particularly with the widespread adoption of molecular techniques. True a few examples of molecular approaches are mentioned briefly but these are historical and relate to work done well before 1996. In terms of our fundamental understanding of the soil biota, molecular techniques, including modern postgenomic technologies, are enabling us to study the traditionally culturable as well as non-culturable organisms within the microbial communities that live in soil. Some recent books have focussed purely on this dimension of applying molecular methodologies and there have been some very good reviews in a variety of journals to cover this. It is therefore rather disappointing for a student today to pick up this book and not to have a description of some of these methodologies and their applications. Of course it is not so easy to update an existing book. But none of this should lessen the value of what is written in the present volume. Consequently, there is a good case for a student to use a molecular microbial ecology textbook to complement this one. At a time when one of the major foci for environmental concerns is sustainability, a consideration of activity in the soil is critical to any analysis of how to generate sustainable ecosystems. I therefore recommend that teachers in environmental subjects should consider this book as a suitable text for their students to read.
In summary, this is a well-produced textbook on the analysis of soil and plant microbiology. However, it ignores much of the excitement inherent in recent studies, particularly those regarding molecular methodologies and their application to our better understanding of soil ecosystems.