Soils are the principal reservoirs of microbial diversity and represent a core component
of terrestrial ecosystems. There is an increasing demand for assessing the impact of
agricultural and industrial practices on the environment at large scales in a context of global
change. To address this demand taxonomic and functional diversity of soil microbial
communities, and their stability over time, need to be characterized to better predict soil
quality. Recent methodological progresses have led to the development and automation of
molecular biological tools (based on the extraction and characterization of nucleic acids),
which now allow their application to large scale samplings making possible the production of
a reliable reference system for the characterization and interpretation of the soil microbial
diversity