U.S. Department of Agriculture: Agricultural Research Service, Lincoln, Nebraska
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
1948
Citation
U.S. Government Works
Abstract
The discovery that certain microorganisms isolated from soil could produce antibiotics when grown in pure cultures in the lab oratory has served to focus attention as never before on the subject of soil microbiology. The main emphasis, however, is on problems entirely unrelated to the processes which go on in the soil. The fact that an organism was isolated from soil and then used in medicine, fermentations, or some such way, does not bring such work in the actual field of soil microbiology. Practically all except the more fastidious animal and plant pathogens can be found in the soil at one time or another. Even some of the fastidious or ganisms are quite regularly found. That is not surprising consider ing that all sorts of materials find their way back to the soil-the dumping place of much of our refuse. In addition, the soil serves as a good matrix for the preservation of microorganisms, provided competition between the various forms is not too severe.
Waksman (1) reviewed the literature up to 1932, and then supplemented his book with a review (2) covering the years 1932- 36. A decade later, Norman (3) very briefly surveyed the field and discussed the status of the science, especially the lack of support allotted to it. It is the purpose of the present paper to review some of the more important work published since 1936. The coverage of the literature cannot be complete owing to the limitation of space; more attention will be paid to some work, less to others. Responsibility for the selection of the references discussed will be the reviewer's, who will be influenced a great deal by his own interests.
Comments
Annual Review of Microbiology Vol. 2, 1948