| Summary: | Heavy metals can be found in soil as natural components or as product of contaminations events; plants growing
in soils are prone to bioaccumulate heavy metals on their biomass. Theobroma cacao L. can bioaccumulate
cadmium (Cd) in the seed and could be in derived food products, it considered a human health risk; therefore,
removal of Cd is desirable but not vet technically and economically feasible; only to avoid Cd in cocoa is by
selecting lands plots exhibiting lower Cd concentrations in soils, imposing a serious limitation to farmers and
regulators. The study of bacterial communities and isolation bacteria with tolerance and mechanisms to counteract
the translocation of Cd to the parts of cocoa plant exhibits high relevance in Colombia economy and
especially to companies producing chocolate and derivatives. Here, we explore bacterial communities associated
with soils having relatively high natural Cd concentrations in a large agricultural cocoa plot located in the
Santander region. We characterized the bacterial communities’ compositions by amplicon 16S rRNA sequencing
from metagenomics soil DNA and by culturing-based enumeration and isolation approaches.
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