A Geostatistical Approach to Visualize the Diversity of Soil Inhabiting Bacteria and Edaphic Qualities in Potato (Solanum tuberosum) Production Systems

A study was conducted in Michigan (MI) to assess spatial patterns of soil biological and physiochemical factors related to yield in potato production. The project developed an approach to integrate techniques including: high-throughput DNA sequencing; GIS; geostatistics; traditional soil analyses; and yield data. Twenty soil samples were taken and GPS marked in the fall of 2012 from a grower's field scheduled to be in potato production, and total genomic DNA was extracted. Parallel sequencing targeting the 16S rRNA gene was used to assess bacterial diversity. The total number of taxa identified by sequence analysis was 21, 81, 140, 300 and 814 at the level of phyla, class, order, family and genus respectively. Sequencing results and information gathered on yield at each point was used to generate multi-layer GIS-based maps.