Nematode Community Profiling as Indicators of Soil Quality: Current Scenario and Future Prospective

NematodesNematodes are the most diverse organism after insects on this planet. The nematodeNematodes community comprises of the population of nematodesNematodes with differences in their feeding habits, shape, size, etc. existing in an ecosystem. They are categorized into fungivores, bacteriovores, herbivores, omnivores and predators based on their feeding habits. Soil healthSoil health can be determined by various characteristics such as stability, resistance to stress, supports biodiversity, nutrient recycling, etc. NematodesNematodes have been exploited as indicators for the evaluation of soil qualities. To keep a check on the soil healthSoil health, various indices were computed by assessing the nematodeNematodes community of a particular region viz., maturity index (MIMaturity index (MI)), enrichment indexEnrichment index (EI) and structural index (SI). The maturity indexMaturity index (MI) is based on the c-p values which are used to decipher the r-strategist and k-strategist in the community. The colonizer was found to be less disturbed by the various activities which have a great effect on other communities, and they are termed as r-strategist. Various models have been used by researchers for carrying out preliminary studies to estimate soil quality. One of these is the soil food webSoil food web model focused on the nematodeNematodes community, which is beneficial to soils such as bacteriovores, predators, etc. and other is the fertilizerFertilizer uses the efficiency model focused on both parasitic and free-living forms of nematodesNematodes. Besides this, the Caenorhabditis elegansCaenorhabditis elegans model was also gained attention from scientists worldwide due to their short generation time, life cycle, and simple culturing of these nematodesNematodes in the laboratories. The effect of any metal which is found higher in a particular region can be evaluated with this model. All the indices based on nematodeNematodes population or community showed a direct or indirect relationship with the soil properties such as nutrients, agricultural practices, plant productivity, etc. Hence, nematodesNematodes can be used as bio-indicators for understanding soil healthSoil health.