Abstract
Urban agriculture has been recently highlighted with the increased importance for recreation in modern society; however, soil quality and public health may not be guaranteed because of continuous exposure to various pollutants. The objective of this study was to evaluate the soil quality of urban agriculture by soil microbial assessments. Two independent variables, organic and inorganic fertilizers, were considered. The activities of soil enzymes including dehydrogenase, β-glucosidase, arylsulfatase, urease, alkaline and acid phosphatases were used as indicators of important microbial mediated functions and the soil chemical properties were measured in the soils applied with organic or inorganic fertilizer for 10 years. Fatty acid methyl ester analysis was applied to determine the soil microbial community composition. Relatively higher microbial community richness and enzyme activities were found in the organic fertilizers applied soils as compared to the inorganic fertilizers applied soils. Principal component analysis explained the positive influence of organic fertilizers on the microbial community. The application of organic fertilizers can be a better alternative compared to inorganic fertilizers for the long-term health and security of urban agriculture.
Highlights
The term urbanization refers to population increase in a certain area due to the movement of rural population to industrialized areas [1]
Soil organic matter content and all nutrients except Mg were significantly higher in the soils applied with organic fertilizers (p < 0.05; Table 2); no difference was found in Mg contents between the soils treated with organic and inorganic fertilizers (p < 0.05)
The long-term application of inorganic fertilizer reduced the soil nutrients availability in the evaluated urban agricultural soils (Table 2). This may be due to the transformation of available forms of nutrients into unavailable forms by the soil acidity, and the poor nutrients retention corresponding to the low organic matter content in inorganic fertilizer applied soils [49]
Summary
The term urbanization refers to population increase in a certain area due to the movement of rural population to industrialized areas [1]. Urban soils are considered as low quality soil due to the subjecting of high land conversion practices as explained previously [8]. Both crop production and animal husbandry practicing in urban lands are considered urban agriculture [9]. “Urban agriculture is an activity that produces, processes, and markets food and other products, on land and water in urban and peri-urban areas, applying intensive production methods, and (re)using natural resources and urban wastes, to yield a diversity of crops and livestock. We have focused only the crop producing urban agricultural lands, and refer to this as urban agriculture from this point onwards
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