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Maintaining soil health is crucial for sustainable agriculture. Recently, soil volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have emerged as promising indicators for assessing soil health. A new study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of soil VOC profiles as indicators of soil health in soybean fields.

Over the past three years, a research team led by University of Tsukuba conducted a comprehensive analysis of soil volatile organic compound (VOC) profiles in soybean fields in Fukushima Prefecture to assess their potential as indicators of soil health.

These samples, which exhibited diverse soil conditions, were analyzed for VOC content in conjunction with data on soil physical properties, soil metabolome, soil ionome, and soil microbiome as well as rhizosphere chemicals and root microbiome to provide a comprehensive soil health assessment.

The results are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

For the first time globally, the analysis revealed that soil VOC levels increased during the soybean flowering period. Furthermore, the soil VOC profiles exhibited a strong correlation with soil-related omics datasets (soil ionome, soil microbiome, soil metabolome, and soil physical properties) but not with the rhizosphere chemicals and root microbiome datasets obtained from soybean-growing fields.

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