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Statement of work for phospholipid fatty acid analysis project

Background or Introduction

Soil microbial communities play essential roles in plant and soil health by aiding in plant nutrient acquisition, pathogen inhibition, abiotic stress tolerance, and biogeochemical cycling. Potato production systems rely on intensive practices including regular tillage and, frequently, chemical fumigation, which can pose challenges to the health and stability of soil microbial communities.

The USDA-SCRI-funded National Potato Soil Health project aims to assess soil health within potato production systems across the country with a focus on the relationships of soil microbial communities to potato soil health and productivity. This national platform will produce a novel, continent-wide, four-year database on the soil bacterial and fungal communities in potato production systems across diverse crop management strategies (twelve crop management treatments within each of eight states).

A weakness of the current National Potato Soil Health project is that the DNA amplicon-based microbial community assessments lack data on total microbial biomass and functional capacities in soil. Knowing the total microbial biomass and the functional capacities of the soil microbiomes is important for optimizing crop management, and these provide crucial context for interpreting the microbiome compositional data being generated by the National project. These data can be generated through Phospholipid Fatty Acid Analysis (PLFA) on the soil samples.

Scope The agency will obtain data on absolute microbial abundance from 500 soil samples from the National Potato Soil Health project.

Objectives

The absolute microbial abundance data from the 500 soil samples will be leveraged in conjunction with the data from the National Potato Soil Health Project to quantify microbial abundances in the different soil samples to enable accurate prediction of microbial soil factors that affect potato health and productivity.

Tasks or Requirements

The contractor must be able to receive 500 non-frozen samples and perform Phospholipid Fatty Acid Analysis (PLFA) on all samples. The PLFA analysis must quantify total microbial biomass and total biomass of Gram+ bacteria, Gram- bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.

Delivery

The vendor should be able to receive the samples and electronically deliver the microbial abundance data within 45 days.

Government-Furnished Property

N/A

Security Requirements

N/A

Place of Performance

The work will be performed at the contractor’s laboratory site. No travel is required.

Period of Performance

The contract should begin in September and last for 45 days. All data from the PLFA should be delivered by the end of the contract.