Response and Behavior of Paddy Soil Microbiota Towards Environmental Change

Climate change as a global issue is characterized by alterations in assessable parameters of climate and other environmental factors, at an alarming rate. These factors are potent enough in modifying the existing dynamics of soil microbiomes in crop fields. Recent studies highlight that the formation of microbial communities associated with roots is selectively influenced by the host plants. Advancements in molecular technologies like high throughput sequencing and ecological network analysis have proved to be revolutionary tools in revealing the microbial diversity, structural community, and their interactions along with determining their habitat affinities with the changed environmental factors. Altered environmental factors like elevated CO2, high temperature, imbalanced fertilizer application, change in moisture regimes, pesticide pollution, etc. have been discussed in this chapter along with their influence on the paddy soil microbiome. A shift in the establishment patterns, diversities, community structure, and functioning is observed significantly owing to these climatic and environmental variations. Crops gradually tend to acclimatize to different adverse external stress conditions generated by environmental change factors using their inbuilt biological mechanisms. The plant and its microbiome interact with each other through different metabolic pathways and form stress tolerance strategies. This chapter, therefore, aims to outline the major environmental change factors and how they have affected the soil microbes, their community composition, and functioning abilities in paddy fields, along with addressing some of the mitigation strategies mediated by microbes in soil nutrient cycle.