Exploring the effects of high concentration of glucose on soil microbial community: An experimental study using the soil of North Bangalore

Substrate Induced Respiration (SIR) is a standard method to study microbial biomass in soil. It is observed that the soil microbial CO2 respiration goes up with the glucose concentration till a certain concentration, and afterwards decreases and stabilizes. There are two possible mechanisms via which this can happen: increased osmotic pressure can kill off a group of microbial population or the Crabtree effect takes over the population. An experiment was designed using the SIR; to find the reason for the same and prove or disprove one of these hypothesises.