Influence of Incorporating Decomposition Agent in Oil Rapeseed Return Practice on Fungal Community, Soil Fertility and the Cotton Yield

Abstract

Oil rapeseed biomass return plays a critical part in agricultural crop production. It is therefore necessary to widen the knowledge on how the microbial community adjustments actuated by straw biomass return under the application of decomposition agent advantages the quality of soil and cotton productivity. The experiment therefore aimed at applying soil molecular (sequencing, alpha and beta diversity analysis) and chemical analysis (alkaline hydrolysis-diffusion, titration and calorimetric) techniques to study the contribution of 3 treatments (no straw return, straw return under decomposition agent and straw return under no decomposition agent) on the diversity of the fungal community, soil quality and cotton productivity. The result showed that fungal OTUs were most abundant within the straw return treatments than the no straw return treatment and this was dominated by ecologically significant genera such as Apodospora, Zopfiella, Staphylotrichum, leptogium and Trechispora. Moreover, it was shown that no straw return treatment had statistically significant lower community diversity under all the indexes as compared to the other two treatments (P <0.05). In conclusion, study therefore confirmed the beneficial contribution of oil rapeseed straw return to the biological (fungal) and physical (pH, N, P and K) quality of the soil, resulting to improved cotton yield parameters.