Soil microbes remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground, revealing an overlooked pathway for storage in agricultural soils.

In the multicellular soil bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, some cells start producing lots of antibiotics after mutations delete big chunks of their genomes. Now a computer model has helped to ...

Soils lose moisture quickly during droughts because the molecular interactions that help retain water are not fully understood. Understanding this mechanism can help engineer soils to better preserve ...

Lynette Abbott examines how the rhizosphere, a narrow collar of soil clinging to plant roots, is emerging as a key player in soil and plant health ...

Marriage of the mineral world and the organic world: Introduction: How soil forms from rocks and weather -- Plant roots and their bacterial partners -- Plant roots and their fungal partners -- Where ...

Manures, organic residuals (e.g., biosolids, food processing wastes), and many commercial fertilizers available to producers contain nitrogen (N). Nitrogen is an important plant nutrient that is often ...

We know that soil feeds plants, but do we know how it got there in the first place? Soil forms via the interaction of five factors: parent material, climate, living beings, a land’s topography, and a ...

If you liked this story, share it with other people. The Earth’s soil stores nearly three times as much carbon as all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, researchers say. However, unchecked ...