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Despite glyphosate's wide use for weed control in agriculture, questions remain about the herbicide's effect on soil microbial communities. The existing scientific literature contains conflicting results, from no observable effect of glyphosate to the enrichment of agricultural pathogens such as Fusarium spp. We conducted a comprehensive field-based study to compare the microbial communities on the roots of plants that received a foliar application of glyphosate to adjacent plants that did not. The 2-year study was conducted in Beltsville, MD, and Stoneville, MS, with corn and soybean crops grown in a variety of organic and conventional farming systems. By sequencing environmental metabarcode amplicons, the prokaryotic and fungal communities were described, along with chemical and physical properties of the soil. Sections of corn and soybean roots were plated to screen for the presence of plant pathogens. Geography, farming system, and season were significant factors determining the composition of fungal and prokaryotic communities. Plots treated with glyphosate did not differ from untreated plots in overall microbial community composition after controlling for other factors. We did not detect an effect of glyphosate treatment on the relative abundance of organisms such as Fusarium spp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite glyphosate's wide use for weed control in agriculture, questions remain about the herbicides effect on soil microbial communities. The existing scientific literature contains conflicting results, from no observable effect of glyphosate to the enrichment of agricultural pathogens such as Fusarium. We conducted a comprehensive field-based study to compare the microbial communties on the roots of plants that received a foliar application of glyphosate to adjacent plants that did not. The two-year study was conducted in Beltsville, Maryland and Stoneville, Mississippi with corn and soybean crops grown in a variety of organic and conventional farming systems. By sequencing environmental metabarcode amplicons, the prokaryotic and fungal communities were described along with chemical and physical properties of the soil. Sections of corn and soybean roots were plated to screen for the presence of plant pathogens. Geography, farming system, and season were significant factors determining composition of fungal and prokaryote communities. Plots treated with glyphosate did not differ from untreated plots in overall microbial community composition after controlling for other factors. We did not detect an effect of glyphosate treatment on the relative abundance of organisms such as Fusarium spp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]