Abstract
Non-marketable crops are increasingly being used as a tool to promote agroecosystem services and sustainable agriculture. Nevertheless, crops vary greatly in the traits by which they capture resources and influence the local ecosystem. Here we report on the traits and associated soil microbial communities that relate to aboveground biomass production, nutrient capture, weed suppression, erosion control and building particulate organic matter of 22 different full-season cover crops. All agroecosystem services were positively correlated with maximum canopy height and leaf area. Rooting density was positively associated with indices of bacterial diversity. While some legumes produced the greatest standing N and P in aboveground biomass, they were also poor at capturing soil nitrate and promoted high levels of potential plant fungal pathogens. Conversely, Brassicaceae crops had the lowest levels of potential plant fungal pathogens, but also suppressed saprophytic fungi and rhizobia. Thus, not all crops are equal in their ability to promote all agroecosystem services, and while some crops may be ideal for promoting a specific agroecosystem service, this could result in a trade-off with another. Nonetheless, our study demonstrates that plant functional traits are informative for the selection of crops for promoting agroecosystem services.
Highlights
Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe growth of agricultural production has increased dramatically over the past century with the aid of intensifying management strategies that include increased use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and reduction of traditional small scale integrative cropping systems [1,2]
By assessing the independent correlations between agroecosystem services with specific soil microbial community characteristics that made up our index of soil health, we found that soil building was significantly negatively associated with greater abundance of sequence reads of AMF, saprotrophic fungi, rhizobia, nitrifying bacteria and Cyanobacteria as well as bacterial richness (Table 3)
Our results show that most agroecosystem services measured here could be related to cover crops with a more rapid, taller growth and larger leaf area
Summary
Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe growth of agricultural production has increased dramatically over the past century with the aid of intensifying management strategies that include increased use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and reduction of traditional small scale integrative cropping systems [1,2]. Over the last few decades, there has been a growing realization that intensive agricultural practices aimed at achieving higher yields have undesirable long-term trade-offs that compromise local biodiversity and the ability of agroecosystems to sustain other desirable services [3,4,5,6,7]. These agroecosystem services include ecosystem properties such as efficient nutrient cycling in soils, building and maintaining soil organic matter and weed control, all of which support agricultural production and sustainability to benefit human societies.
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