Soil Humeomics: a potential tool to relate SOM to bio-activity in agriculture

Intensified crop production caused soil quality damage. In most cases, these processes are related to the activities of soil microorganisms, but, due to its heterogeneity and its extremely high biodiversity, the soil is one of the most complex ecosystems on Earth. Then, until recently, the study of the complex soil microbial communities and the plant-soil-microbial interactions responsible for agricultural soil functioning was an overwhelming task. With the development of the “-omics” strategies, the study of uncultured microorganisms has expanded beyond asking “Who is there?” to include the question “What are they doing?” The development and application of bioinformatic tools are needed to gather, assimilate and interrogate the large diverse datasets generated by “-omics” technologies. Humeomics applied directly on agricultural Soils provide the molecular link between agricultural practices and SOM and carbon pools dynamics, and when applied on various soil samples will improve significantly the knowledge about SOM composition and structure. Humeomics could become the future platform introducing an index of soil quality using the knowledge of the fractions.