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. 2020 Mar 11;71(13):3878–3901. doi: 10.1093/jxb/eraa111

Table 1.

Soil factors that are responsible for shaping microbial communities

Factors Summary References
Soil and abiotic factors pH can alter the solubility and availability of nutrients influencing microbial diversity and composition with stronger influence on bacteria than fungi. Fierer and Jackson (2006); Lauber et al. (2008); Lauber et al. (2009); Shen et al. (2013); Maestre et al. (2015); Zhang et al. (2017); Shen et al. (2018)
Soil fertilization (e.g. NPK) and soil amendment (e.g. carbon) practices can affect nutrient status and influence bacterial and fungal communities in soil; C content is important for microbial growth and survival Marschner et al. (2004); Eilers et al. (2010); Goldfarb et al. (2011); Kuramae et al. (2012); Siciliano et al. (2014); Maestre et al. (2015); Francioli et al. (2016)
Changes in temperature and water content (or precipitation) can affect soil pH and nutrient status, and influence microbial community composition and function Pettersson and Bååth (2003); Habekost et al. (2008); Bárcenas-Moreno et al. (2009); Bell et al. (2009); Castro et al. (2010); Koranda et al. (2013); Zhang et al. (2019)
Soil type, texture, structure, and particle size can affect the flow and status of nutrients and water, and influence microbial communities in soil and rhizosphere Gelsomino et al. (1999); Sessitsch et al. (2001); Girvan et al. (2003); Singh et al. (2007); Bach et al. (2010); Chau et al. (2011); Schreiter et al. (2014)
Soil salinity can affect soil and plant-associated microbial communities Lozupone and Knight (2007); Yaish et al. (2016); Thiem et al. (2018); Berens et al. (2019)
Drought can affect soil and plant-associated microbial communities Bachar et al. (2010); Hueso et al. (2012); Alster et al. (2013); Bogino et al. (2013); Naylor and Coleman-Derr (2018); Xu et al. (2018)
Soil and biotic factors Distinct microbial communities are correlated with the presence or occurrence of plant pathogens or diseases; suppressive soils could contain more microbes with antagonistic activity; initial differences in the soil microbiome composition can affect plant health Sanguin et al. (2009); Mendes et al. (2011); Meng et al. (2012); Rosenzweig et al. (2012); Siegel-Hertz et al. (2018); Wei et al. (2019); Zhou et al. (2019)
Agricultural management practices and land use can cause changes in microbial community composition and diversity Steenwerth et al. (2002); Garbeva et al. (2006); Lauber et al. (2008); Postma et al. (2008); Reeve et al. (2010); Carbonetto et al. (2014); Peralta et al. (2018); Sun et al. (2018); Le Guillou et al. (2019)