Insights into the Microbial Diversity in Saline-Alkaline Soils of China

There are many types of saline-alkali soils and lakes on the earth. In some unique saline-alkali environments, the salinity can reach saturation and the alkaline pH value even can reach 11. Despite these two drastic circumstances, there is a kind of special life-haloalkaliphiles inhabiting and breeding in this habitat. To resolve such extreme conditions, these haloalkaliphiles have unique adaptabilities. This chapter mainly introduces the distribution and sources of some types of saline-alkali soil in China. The focus is on understanding their microbial diversity, including culture-dependent and independent approaches. This chapter also focuses on listing the new strains and their characteristics reported in China from different saline-alkaline soils.