Drought is a serious abiotic stress on plants as wells as the microbes that coexist with plants, which significantly lowers their fitness. The plant-bacterial interaction is an important strategy to enhance their fitness under drought.

Lignocellulose, composed mostly of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin generated through secondary growth of woody plant, is considered as promising resources for biofuel. In order to use lignocellulose as a biofuel, biodegradation besides high-cost chemical treatments were applied, but knowledge on the decomposition of lignocellulose occurring in a natural environment is insufficient. We analyzed the 16S rRNA gene and metagenome to understand how the lignocellulose is decomposed naturally in decayed Torreya nucifera (L) of Bija forest (Bijarim) in Gotjawal, an ecologically distinct environment. A total of 464,360 reads were obtained from 16S rRNA gene sequencing, representing diverse phyla; Proteobacteria (51%), Bacteroidetes (11%) and Actinobacteria (10%). The metagenome analysis using single molecules real-time sequencing revealed that the assembled contigs determined originated from Proteobacteria (58%) and Actinobacteria (10.3%). Carbohydrate Active enZYmes (CAZy)and Protein families (Pfam)-based analysis showed that Proteobacteria was involved in degrading whole lignocellulose, and Actinobacteria played a role only in a part of hemicellulose degradation. Combining these results, it suggested that Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria had selective biodegradation potential for different lignocellulose substrates. Thus, it is considered that understanding of the systemic microbial degradation pathways may be a useful strategy for recycle of lignocellulosic biomass, and the microbial enzymes in Bija forest can be useful natural resources in industrial processes.

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Soil microbiome has played a critical role in the plant survival during drought. However, the drought tolerance of soil microbiome and its ability to promote plant growth under drought is still scarcely studied.

Agricultural reservoirs are established to improve the management of water resources. Waterbirds in protected waters have become a nuisance, however, as nutrients from fecal deposits transported by the waterbirds have served to severely deteriorate water quality. Despite the importance of clean water resources, the microecology of small agricultural reservoirs regularly colonized by transitory waterbirds are seldom reviewed. To improve our understanding of the influence of waterbirds on small bodies of water, a microcosm study was conducted using water and sediment from an agricultural reservoir inhabited by 300 to 500 great cormorants. Temporal changes in total nitrogen, total phosphorous, chemical oxygen demand, NH-N, PO-P, and chlorophyll-a concentrations, in addition to the microbial community, were evaluated for microcosms containing 0, 0.5, 1.0, and 5.0 g of feces collected from a great cormorant colony. Chemical analysis of the water microcosm revealed that all microcosms showed both immediate and prolonged increases in nutrients due to the addition of feces. Additionally, a mere 0.5 g of feces doubled the concentration of chlorophyll-a from 2.1 ± 0.99 to 5.2 ± 1.1 μg L within 1 mo. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling of the microbial community structure revealed disturbances in both water and sediment microcosms. Disturbances to the microbial community in the water microcosm were significant only when 5.0 g of feces was added; however, disturbances to sediment microbial communities were induced by a smaller mass of feces. These results confirm the short-term water quality impairment and shift in microbial community structure caused by waterbird droppings and bird colony surface runoff in an agricultural reservoir.