Autoclaving is at least as effective as gamma irradiation for biotic clearing and intentional microbial recolonization of soil.

ABSTRACT: Sterilization is commonly used to remove or reduce the biotic constraints of a soil to allow recolonization by soil-dwelling organisms, with autoclaving and gamma irradiation being the most frequently used approaches. Many studies have characterized sterilization impacts on soil physicochemical properties, with gamma irradiation often described as the preferred approach, despite the lower cost and higher scalability of autoclaving. However, few studies have compared how sterilization techniques impact soil recolonization by microorganisms. Here, we compared how two sterilization approaches (autoclaving; gamma irradiation) and soil washing impacted microbial recolonization of soil from a diverse soil inoculum. Sterilization method had little impact on microbial alpha diversity across recolo

SUBMITTER: King WL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11288020 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature