Examination for Soil Microbiology
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Describe the scope or aspect of soil microbiology in the last ten years.
Describe the effect of soil water and soil air on microorganisms.
Describe the restriction of soil nutrients on microorganisms.
What’s serial dilution and plate count? Describe the principle and limitation of
this method.
5. Describe the principle and protocol of chloroform fumigation method for
microbial biomass determination
6. Describe the principle of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and its application
in soil microbiology.
7. Explain the basic assumptions of microscopic counting of microorganisms.
What are the methods frequently used for counting soil microorganisms?
8. Describe the application of soil microorganisms in agricultural production and
environmental remediation. How to track microorganisms inoculated into
environment?
9. Describe the differences between bacteria and archaea?
10. Describe the symbiotic relationship in lichen.
11. Describe briefly what’s rhizobacteria and their functions?
12. Why aerobic and anaerobic microorganisms can coexist in agricultural soil.
13. Describe the biochemical processes mediated by anaerobic soil
microorganisms and the requirement of oxygen for each process?
14. Describe the principle, mechanism and ecological meaning of soil
homeostasis.
15. Describe the effects of soil water, organic matter, pH, cultivation and
xenobiotic chemicals on soil organisms.
16. Describe the interactions between soil microorganisms.
17. Describe how to determine the microbial diversity in soil.
18. What’s soil organic matter? What’s the composition of organic matter.
Describe the definition of each composition.
19. Explain why humic substances decompose so slowly in soil.
20. Describe nitrogen cycle from the soil science viewpoint and illustrate the
genus name of microorganisms involved in each reaction.
21. Describe the types of reaction kinetics of soil organic matter decomposition,
and the application scope of each type of reaction.
22. Describe the fate of nitrate in soil.
23. Write the reaction equation of autotrophic nitrification and illustrate two genus
names of microorganisms involved in each reaction.
24. Write the reaction equation of denitrification. Describe the soil factors which
regulate the denitrification in denitrifying microorganisms and soil aspect.
25. Explain why nitrification may occur in acid soil or paddy soil and anaerobic
denitrification may occur in well drained sandy soil.
26. Describe different types of biological nitrogen fixation and illustrate the genus
name of microorganisms involved in each process.
27. Describe the procedures and principles of two methods for the determination
of biological nitrogen fixation.
28. Describe the infection and nodulation processes of rhizobia.
29. What’s arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) ? Describe the function of AM and the
limitation of using AM as inoculants to increase crop production.
30. Describe the dynamics of microbial community in the composting process.
31. Describe the ecological effect when microbial culture is inoculated into soil.
32. Describe the microbial transformation of sulfur in soil.
33. Describe the mechanisms involved in the transformation of unavailable
phosphorus to available phosphorus in soil.
34. Describe the rhizosphere effect and how the effect results from.
35. What’s greenhouse effect? What’s the two gases produced by soil organisms
involved in the greenhouse effect and what’s the biogenesis processes of these
gases?
36. Describe how to confirm a microbial strain isolated from soil to be rhizobia.
37. Please explain the terms listed below:
1). Immuno-fluorescence technique
2). Substrate-induced respiration method
3). Most-probable-number
4). Gene probe techniques
5). Southern blots
6). Restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis
7). Reporter genes
8). Phylogeny
9). Photoheterotroph
10). Indigenous species
11). r –Selected species
12). Copiotrophs
13). Colony
14). Cyanobacter
15). Heterocyst
16). Methanogens
17). Ciliates
18). Amoebas
19). Sporangiospore
20). Chlamydospore
21). Zygospore
22). Fruiting body
23). Deuteromycetes fungi
24). Nematodes
25). Collembolams
26). Microbial diversity
27). Cometabolize
28). Siderophores
29). Chemodenitrification
30). Greenhouse gases
31). Azolla
32). nod
33). nif
34). fix
35). hup
36). Dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium
37). Acetylene block method
38). Nitrogenase
39). Bacteroid
40). Nod facter
41). Competition
42). Hyperparasitism
43). Antagonisis
44). Pathogen-suppressive soils
45). Solarization
46). Plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria
47). Bioremediation
48). Xenobiotic chemicals
49). Bioavailability
50). Consortia
51). Reductive dehalogenation
52). Bioaugmentation
53). Landfarming
54). Phytoremediation
55). Biosolids
56). Composting
57). Eutrophication
58). Methylation
59). Biogeochemistry
60). Acetylene reduction assay