Global Agricultural Soil Research Initiative (GASRI) is established in response to major global challenges related to sustainable agricultural development and food security, with the overarching goal of building an international collaborative research network dedicated to the “microecology” of agricultural soils. Centered on major staple crops, including wheat, maize, rice, and soybean, the initiative adopts a globally harmonized paired-sampling framework to undertake large-scale, standardized collection and systematic investigation of soils from representative croplands and their adjacent natural ecosystems. Through this effort, GASRI seeks to elucidate the coupled effects of agricultural practices, climate change, and soil microecological dynamics, and to identify the key driving factors and regulatory pathways that govern agroecosystem functional stability, nutrient cycling efficiency, and crop productivity.
Since its inception in 2020, GASRI has been led by the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has established a solid foundation for international collaboration with research institutions in Ecuador, Australia, Oman, Kenya, Denmark, Belgium, and other countries. To date, under unified technical protocols, the project team has completed the collection of more than 5,000 soil samples from croplands and adjacent natural ecosystems across major crop-producing regions worldwide, covering more than 40 countries. In parallel, systematic investigations have been conducted on soil physicochemical characteristics as well as multiple omics layers, including 16S rRNA, ITS, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, and metabolomics. These efforts have led to the preliminary establishment of a global resource database on the “microecology” of agricultural soils.
The Consortium aims to:
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