Soil-derived organic particles and their effects on the community of culturable microorganisms

Soil microbial community interacts with a range of particulate material in the soil, consisting of both inorganic and organic compounds with different levels of water solubility. Though sparingly water-soluble and insoluble organic compounds in the soil may affect living organisms, they are difficult to introduce into microbiological media. Their biological activity (i.e., their effect on soil microorganisms) thus has been almost neglected in most of the cultivation assays. To fill this gap, we propose the use of fine organic particles prepared from soil organic matter that are introduced into a laboratory medium where microbial community is cultivated. To this purpose, submicrometer particles consisting of sparingly water-soluble or insoluble soil organic matter were obtained from humic horizons of two soils by precipitation of organics dissolved in tetrahydrofuran by addition of water. The particles could then be size fractionated by centrifugation, and coarse fraction obtained from humic horizon formed under spruce forest was tested for effects on complex microbial community developing under laboratory conditions. The results indicate that low concentration (20 mg/L) of the particles is efficient to affect the composition of the bacterial community revealed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism. The work contributes to understanding the factors that determine the composition of soil microbial community.