- TRUTH (Thriving Roots Underpinning Total soil Health) is a three-year £1m project with twin aims of boosting productivity while improving soil health. The project is led by the British On-Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN) with four partners UK Agri-Tech Centre, the John Innes Centre, University of Nottingham and PES Technologies.
Ten ‘Root Ranger’ farmers were paid to carry out on-farm trials in year one (2024), with an additional 10 recruited recently for year two (2025). The Root Rangers’ farms represent varied soil types, across conventional, regenerative and organic systems. They are based across the UK from East Lothian in Scotland to Downpatrick in Northern Ireland and as far south as the Isle of Wight. The farmers each chose a treatment they wanted to assess and have been trained in soil sampling methods.
Microorganism discovery
Dr Tom Thirkell of Crop Science Centre in Cambridge is an expert in mycorrhizal fungi which he has been studying in wheat root samples taken by the Root Rangers. As well as healthy populations of mycorrhiza, Tom’s analysis of the Root Rangers’ samples has also uncovered some “unidentified foreign organisms” (UFOs).
Some of these appear to be bacteria, while others are likely to belong to an ancient but newly-described group of fungi known as Mucoromycotina.
Tom said: “We believe these can also form beneficial interactions with cereal crop roots, but there has been very little study of them compared to the arbuscular mycorrhizas.”
They were found in several samples and are not unique to a specific type of farm. “They are random in how they crop up, but a strength of this project is that we can repeat these tests in years two and three and see if there are any patterns.”
Tom also hopes that DNA sequencing of these samples may be possible in future, so that the ‘UFOs’ can be identified.
His findings from year one suggest that variations in fungal presence are influenced more by individual farms’ management practices, rather than the different treatments being trialled, but repetition of sampling in years two and three will develop this understanding further.
Microbial analysis
Dr Maria Hernandez-Soriano of the John Innes Centre is leading a fascinating investigation into soil microbial diversity. Her work involves analysing DNA from soil samples collected by Root Rangers across 10 farms, revealing a staggering 15,686 individual species.
At the John Innes Centre laboratories in Norwich some 222 samples from the Root Rangers were carefully processed to extract the DNA. The DNA was then prepared for sequencing by specialists to ensure the best quality analysis, and finally sent to a leading provider of sequencing services.
The scientists then compiled a ‘library’ of all the DNA found in the samples, naming matched sequences using extensive databases. The result is a vast spreadsheet listing all the individual species found in each sample – a total of 15,686 across the Root Rangers’ soils. From there the data was analysed, drawing comparisons across different systems and the whole dataset, but also drilling down into individual farms’ results to assess and compare diversity.
Maria said: “At the moment the results are suggesting that management is the strongest influence.” In particular, the organic farmers amongst the Root Rangers had the most diverse samples with a significant difference in nitrification too.
Diversity is important because these microbes work together as part of a complex network, both in cooperation with each other and regulating their different roles in soil. “It’s a huge community – some of which we know a lot about while others are yet to be characterised.”
Understanding the activity of nitrification bacteria helps in improving nitrogen use efficiency, Maria added. She has been looking closely at two of the most prevalent nitrifying communities, Nitrososphaera and Nitroscosmicus archaea. These have become the biomarkers in the rhizosphere of modern cultivars following N-fertiliser application, to the detriment of other communities, she explained.
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