Cornell researchers have developed an innovative technique to track microbes and understand the various ways they process soil carbon, findings that add to our knowledge of how bacteria contribute to the global carbon cycle.

Soil microbes are living, working barometers of soil health. Farm management decisions affect these microscopic workhorses, but, until now, scientists didn't have a full picture of how crop rotation and tillage influence the soil microbiome, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

After harvest in the fall, farmers take the harvested crops to market or store them on their farm. They don't take the whole plant from the field, though. The leftover parts of the plant, like the stalk and leaves from corn, remain in the field. This debris is called crop residue. Read more in this article from Phys.org and the American Society of Agronomy.

Only a fraction of conventional row crop farmers grow cover crops after harvest, but a new global analysis from the University of Illinois shows the practice can boost soil microbial abundance and diversity but termination method and tillage regime can impact results.

South Dakota State University Extension buried mens' white cotton briefs in different tillage systems and viewed their decompositions as a comparison in the soil microbiology levels.