Investigation of Soil Microbial Communities and Vegetation for Baseline Database Development at Selected Sites in Kuwait Desert

"Kuwait has experienced land degradation and desertification in recent decades mainly due to the highly unpredictable
environment, water scarcity, saline soils and extreme aridity, overgrazing, camping, and war activities associated with
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Consequently, Kuwait’s native plants are threatened in their natural habitat and have begun decreasing at an alarming rate. Biodiversity loss can affect the ecosystem’s soil microbial community, functions,
and services. Soil microorganisms are crucial components for the functioning of the terrestrial ecosystem. Although
the relationships between vegetation, soil, and climate have long been recognized elsewhere, very little is known on
Kuwait’s desert ecosystem, and the functional importance of microbial biodiversity for the maintenance of soil bio-geological process is unknown. Therefore, the current project was initiated from an essential research program to investigate the distribution and abundance of vegetation and microbial communities, and their interactions in plant-root-soil
systems in response to biotic and abiotic factors of Kuwait’s environment.
The project period, mobilization, selection, and establishment of monitoring sites, soil core collection, soil microbial
analysis, soil Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extraction, seedling germination and production for bioassay and field
trials, indigenous inoculum production, and procurement of weather data were initiated. Results show extracted DNA
was successfully visualized using electrophoresis in 1% agarose gel. All necessary purchase requests related to this
project were initiated, partially completed, and are in progress for some items."