Management Strategies for Soil Used for Cultivation, Including Modulation of the Soil Microbiome

Management strategies that promote the return to the soil of plant residues, where possible minimizing mechanical preparation, have been recommended. This chapter aims to evaluate the developments, including how one can take profit of the emerging new “precision” soil management approaches in order to foster the sustainability of land use. Different types of land management and cultivation intensities exert significantly different influences on the dominant bacteria and fungi in soil. Soil microbiomes are essential for the quality of agroecosystems, as they drive the belowground processes that support crop development. The aforementioned rapid developments in robotics, visualization, and artificial intelligence hold great promise for precision farming. To enable the linking of microbiome activity assessments to soil management practices, biosensors can be of great help. Biosensors based on whole bacterial cells have been traditionally developed to assess pollutant bioavailability in soil. The modulation of soil microbiomes constitutes a promising approach to be further explored for biotechnology purposes.