Dear Jeyanny,

It is great to see a fellow worker in Mangrove metagenomics. We have been working on this at Sunderbans for quite some time now.

What is the region of soil that you want to collect? If it is the rhizosphere of individual plants then you have to go to around 2 feet depth from the surface and collect the adjoining soil maintaining proper sterile apparatus and collection conditions.

However, if you are studying the association of mangrove communities then you have to evaluate the proper abundance of the specific plant or plants of choice in a community and then collect the sample from the surface.

Its best to collect the samples in RNA LATER and prior to immersion in RNA LATER you can seive the samples using a 10/20mm mesh such that debris and other plant parts are removed.

Once stored in RNA LATER you can keep the samples in room temperature for a maximum of 2 - 3 days. Thus plan your "collection to isolation to sequencing" time frame accordingly.

Hope this helps.

For further queries you can email me at [email protected]

Best Wishes

Sayak

Dear Sayak, We plan to collect in the Malaysian coastline. Thank you for your answer, I shall email you soon with my further queries

I'm not an expert in metagenomics, but do have a lot of experience in wetlands soil sampling. My favorite tool in samplings is a piston corer. It allows you to sample without compressing the soils. Care must be taken at the moment to extract and disect the core so you don't have interferences within depths.

Hi jorge tq for that. I just came back from the mangroves and what i did was that i sampled and later froze the samples. Hopefully it gives better preservation

thanks Lin for the tip! Yes I sampled at 20 cm at roots as well.