Soil Fungal Biodiversity for Plant and Soil Health

Book excerpt: Fungi represent a large portion of the biodiversity on Earth and they are key players in soils where they provide numerous ecosystem functions. Soil fungi have pivotal ecological roles influencing plant health as symbionts, pathogens or decomposers. Soil fungal biodiversity is increasingly recognized as providing benefits to soil health as they facilitate if not control numerous ecosystem processes. Continued research on the identity, abundance and distribution of soil fungi, their various roles in context with the differentiation of the soil fungal community are thus fundamental to better understand the dimensions of fungal biodiversity, its impact on plant health as well as the prevention of fungal diseases. This Research Topic aims at collecting contributions that provide taxonomic, physiological and ecological characterizations of soil fungal communities that will aid in the understanding of their biology, their interrelationships as well as the mechanisms that underpin the various ecosystem functions they provide in the soil environment. This Research Topic focusing on environmental mycology encourages in particular to report sensitive, accurate and fast methods for the detection, identification and distribution of fungi, including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolomics approaches, as they increasingly reveal the impact of fungal biodiversity for soil and plant health.