ARI Biennial Review for 2018-2019

accumulation as well as the growth of copiotrophic bacterial groups, like Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. Interestingly, direct soil N 2 O emissions were decoupled from the density of denitrifier community, while agricultural waste caused a substantial reduction of the relative abundance of bacterial taxa associated with N 2 O emissions in the soil. This study provides evidence that agricultural waste could be integrated in a waste management strategy, which inter alia includes their direct use in agricultural ecosystems, leading to reduced N 2 O emissions ( Μ. Omirou, I.M. Ioannides ) National Soil Genetic Resources Bank Through the RESTART call, the Research Promotion Foundation funded the establishment of the first National Soil Genetic Resources Bank. The aim of this infrastructure is to isolate, characterise and store soil microbes from terrestrial ecosystems of the Republic of Cyprus. Also, a Next Generation Sequencing platform has been established. The objective of the unit is to map and characterise the soil microbiome of Cyprus terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, functional microbial guilds for important crops have been isolated, and breeding processes have been linked with rhizosphere related traits ( M. Omirou, D. Fasoula, D. Neocleous, P. Dalias, I. M. Ioannides ) 69 AGROBIOTECHNOLOGY