2022, Wassermann, Birgit, Abdelfattah, Ahmed, Cernava, Tomislav, Wicaksono, Wisnu, Berg, Gabriele

Microbiomes have an immense potential to enhance plant resilience to various biotic and abiotic stresses. However, intrinsic microbial communities respond to changes in their host's physiology and environment during plant's life cycle. The potential of the inherent plant microbiome has been neglected for a long time, especially for the postharvest period. Currently, close to 50% of all produced fruits and vegetables are lost either during production or storage. Biological control of spoilage and storage diseases is still lacking sufficiency. Today, novel multiomics technologies allow us to study the microbiome and its responses on a community level, which will help to advance current classic approaches and develop more effective and robust microbiome-based solutions for fruit and vegetable storability, quality, and safety.

2016, Lanza, Giacomo, Rebensburg, Philip, Kern, Jürgen, Lentzsch, Peter, Wirth, Stephan

The carbonisation of biomass and organic residues is discussed as an opportunity to store stabilised carbon compounds in soil and to reduce mineralisation and the emission of CO2. In this study, pyrolysis char (600 °C, 30 min) and hydrothermal carbonisation char (HTC char; 210 °C, 23 bar, 8 h), both derived from maize silage, were investigated in a short-term incubation experiment of soil mixtures with or without readily available carbon (glucose) in order to reveal impacts on soil microbial respiration and community composition. In contrast to pyrolysis char, the addition of HTC char increased respiration and enhanced the growth of fungi. The addition of glucose to soil-char mixtures containing either pyrolysis or HTC char induced an additional increase of respiration, but was 35% and 39% lower compared to soil-glucose mixtures, respectively, providing evidence for a negative priming effect. No significant difference was observed comparing the soil mixtures containing pyrolysis char + glucose and HTC char + glucose. The addition of glucose stimulated the growth of most microbial taxa under study, especially of Actinobacteria at the expense of fungi. Adding pyrolysis or HTC char to soil induced a decline of all microbial taxa but did not modify the microbial community structure significantly. Addition of pyrolysis or HTC char in combination with glucose however, increased the abundance of Actinobacteria and reduced the relative abundance of Acidobacteria and Betaproteobacteria while fungi were further increased in case of HTC char. We conclude that both chars hold the potential to bring about specific impacts on soil microbial activities and microbial community structure, and that they may compensate the variations induced by the addition of readily available carbon.

2019, Theuerl, S., Herrmann, C., Heiermann, M., Grundmann, P., Landwehr, N., Kreidenweis, U., Prochnow, A.

After nearly two decades of subsidized and energy crop-oriented development, agricultural biogas production in Germany is standing at a crossroads. Fundamental challenges need to be met. In this article we sketch a vision of a future agricultural biogas plant that is an integral part of the circular bioeconomy and works mainly on the base of residues. It is flexible with regard to feedstocks, digester operation, microbial communities and biogas output. It is modular in design and its operation is knowledge-based, information-driven and largely automated. It will be competitive with fossil energies and other renewable energies, profitable for farmers and plant operators and favorable for the national economy. In this paper we discuss the required contribution of research to achieve these aims.

2019, Theuerl, S., Klang, J., Prochnow, A.

Disturbances of the anaerobic digestion process reduce the economic and environmental performance of biogas systems. A better understanding of the highly complex process is of crucial importance in order to avoid disturbances. This review defines process disturbances as significant changes in the functionality within the microbial community leading to unacceptable and severe decreases in biogas production and requiring an active counteraction to be overcome. The main types of process disturbances in agricultural biogas production are classified as unfavorable process temperatures, fluctuations in the availability of macro- and micronutrients (feedstock variability), overload of the microbial degradation potential, process-related accumulation of inhibiting metabolites such as hydrogen (H 2 ), ammonium/ammonia (NH 4 + /NH 3 ) or hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S) and inhibition by other organic and inorganic toxicants. Causes, mechanisms and effects on the biogas microbiome are discussed. The need for a knowledge-based microbiome management to ensure a stable and efficient production of biogas with low susceptibility to disturbances is derived and an outlook on potential future process monitoring and control by means of microbial indicators is provided.