**7. Conclusion**

Soil being a complex environment, understanding of the interactions within microbial communities and soil environments is very much necessary for designing the strategies for sustainable agriculture, bioremediation, and human welfare. Soil metagenomic data will reveal potential activities present in microbial communities which can be harnessed for future good use. The huge diversity of soil microorganisms, together with the heterogeneity of the soil environment, hinders analyses of microbial diversity, structure and the linking functional processes. One of the major challenges for soil metagenomics is to develop methods to capture the heterogeneity and dynamics of complex soil microbial communities, both over time and spatially. However, new methods will greatly increase the number of samples that can be analyzed in the future. All the methods used for the investigating microbial diversity and activity contain inherent biases and it is necessary to understand the underlying mechanisms in order to be aware of the drawbacks and limitations, and to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach [9]. Nevertheless, these methods are starting to dissect the soil microbial biomass and the soil metagenome, and will, in the future, enable a greatly improved understanding of microbial community dynamics and interactions relevant to soil functions.

The TerraGenome International Soil Metagenome Sequencing Consortium has been dedicated towards soil metagenomics and helps in co-coordinating the global researchers for the discovery of the soil hidden treasures (http://www.terragenome.org/).

*Metagenomics - Basics, Methods and Applications*
