Researchers at the VistaMilk SFI Research Centre in Fermoy, Co Cork, have begun analysing the genetic make-up of Irish soil in order to understand how they develop and transmit anti-microbial resistance (AMR).

According to Rose Edwin, the PhD student leading the research, AMR is a factor in as many as 700,000 deaths a year globally and results of this project, she added, could help prevent more than 33,000 deaths in Europe each year and save €1.5bn in medical costs.

Edwin believes that an understanding of the soil microbiome is as important as the understandings of food, human and animal microbiomes, but with far greater implications for human health than previously thought.

“Similar to other microbiomes, there are microbes – bacteria, fungi, archaea, protozoa and viruses – that perform specific tasks and identifying them and their presence in soils is of major importance,” Edwin said.

Microbes, she added, have symbiotic relationships with plants, playing a pivotal role not only in their growth, but also in their ability to resist disease and withstand drought conditions.

Anti-microbial resistance

In relation to identifying anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in the soil microbiome, Edwin said that microbes have developed resistance to antibiotics or other drugs over many years.

"Soils are the source of many of the antibiotics we use clinically and a natural reservoir of AMR, but AMR can also be transmitted to the soil, and potentially into the food chain, through human activity," she said.

Beyond human health, plant growth and soil health – all of which are central to the sustainability of Ireland’s dairy industry – the soil microbiome also holds the key to how much of society’s carbon emissions can be sequestered by the land, she added.

Currently, it is believed that carbon sequestration in Ireland could be underestimated and an understanding of how microbes work with plants to sequester carbon could be one of the keys to unlocking this puzzle, according to Edwin.