Sampling Root-Associated Microbiome Communities of Maize (<i>Zea mays</i>)

The soil microbiome of maize shapes its fitness, sustainability, and productivity. Accurately sampling maize's belowground microbial communities is important for identifying and characterizing these functions. Here, we describe a protocol to sample the maize rhizosphere (including the rhizoplane and endorhizosphere) and root zone (still influential but further from the root) in a form suitable for downstream analyses like culturing and DNA extractions. Although this protocol is written with <i>Zea mays</i> as the focus, these methods can generally be applied to any plant with similar fibrous root systems.