Abstract
Cover cropping is proposed to enhance soil microbial diversity and activity, with cover crop type affecting microbial groups in different ways. We compared fungal community compositions of bulk soils differing by cover crop treatment, season, and edaphic properties in the third year of an organic, conventionally tilled rotation of corn-soybean-wheat planted with winter cover crops. We used Illumina amplicon sequencing fungal assemblages to evaluate effects of nine treatments, each replicated four times, consisting of six single winter cover crop species, a three-species mixture, a six-species mixture, and fallow. Alpha-diversity of fungal communities was not affected by cover crop species identity, function, or diversity. Sampling season influenced community composition as well as genus-level abundances of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Cover crop mixtures, specifically the three-species mixture, had distinct AM fungal community compositions, while cereal rye and forage radish monocultures had unique Core OTU compositions. Soil texture, pH, permanganate oxidizable carbon, and chemical properties including Cu, and P were important variables in models of fungal OTU distributions across groupings. These results showed how fungal composition and potential functions were shaped by cover crop treatment as well as soil heterogeneity.
Highlights
Cover cropping is proposed to enhance soil microbial diversity and activity, with cover crop type affecting microbial groups in different ways
We investigated the impact of cover cropping with monocultures and polycultures on arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, Insect Pathogens, Core, Rare, Abundant, and all fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs)
16 682 OTUs were observed from all 72 samples, with 12 275 OTUs taxonomically classified as fungal sequences
Summary
Cover cropping is proposed to enhance soil microbial diversity and activity, with cover crop type affecting microbial groups in different ways. We compared fungal community compositions of bulk soils differing by cover crop treatment, season, and edaphic properties in the third year of an organic, conventionally tilled rotation of corn-soybean-wheat planted with winter cover crops. PH, permanganate oxidizable carbon, and chemical properties including Cu, and P were important variables in models of fungal OTU distributions across groupings These results showed how fungal composition and potential functions were shaped by cover crop treatment as well as soil heterogeneity. Planting mixtures of cover crops has been proposed as a means to provide varied combinations of ecosystem services based on the functional traits of individual cover crop species[5,7,8,9,10]. Complutense s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain. *email: Grouping Type Functional Grouping Abundance Grouping
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