Response of microbial community of organic-matter-impoverished arable soil to long-term application of soil conditioner derived from dynamic rapid fermentation of food waste.

Jiaqi Hou,Xuhui Mao,Hongliang Liu,Mingxiao Li,Jie Ding,Yan Hao,Beidou Xi,Dongming Liu,Andrew C Singer

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0175715

Abstract

Rapid fermentation of food waste can be used to prepare soil conditioner. This process consumes less time and is more cost-effective than traditional preparation technology. However, the succession of the soil microbial community structure after long-term application of rapid fermentation-derived soil conditioners remains unclear. Herein, dynamic rapid fermentation (DRF) of food waste was performed to develop a soil conditioner and the successions and diversity of bacterial communities in an organic-matter-impoverished arable soil after six years of application of DRF-derived soil conditioner were investigated. Results showed that the treatment increased soil organic matter (SOM) accumulation and strawberry yield by 5.3 g/kg and 555.91 kg/ha, respectively. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, and Firmicutes became the dominant phyla, occupying 65.95%–77.52% of the bacterial sequences. Principal component analysis (PCA) results showed that the soil bacterial communities were largely influenced by the treatment. Redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that the relative abundances of Gemmatimonadetes, Chloroflexi, Verrucomicrobia, Nitrospirae, and Firmicutes were significantly correlated with soil TC, TN, TP, NH4+-N, NO3−-N, OM, and moisture. These communities were all distributed in the soil samples collected in the sixth year of application. Long-term treatment did not enhance the diversity of bacterial species but significantly altered the distribution of major functional bacterial communities in the soils. Application of DRF-derived soil conditioner could improve the soil quality and optimize the microbial community, ultimately enhancing fruit yields.

Highlights

The increasing population and food demand in the past decades have resulted in unprecedented challenges for agriculture [1,2]
As food waste always contains substantial amounts of organic matters and plant nutrients mainly originate from agriculture soil, it is often recognized as an ideal raw material for preparation of organic fertilizer used to complement soil organic carbon [4,5]
The effect of long-term application of dynamic rapid fermentation (DRF)-derived soil conditioner on OM-impoverished arable soil was evaluated in this study

Summary

Introduction

The increasing population and food demand in the past decades have resulted in unprecedented challenges for agriculture [1,2]. Effect of DRF-derived soil conditioner on OM-impoverished arable soil added into soils to remedy these problems. Such activities worsened the qualities of arable soil and led to widespreadorganic-matter (OM)-impoverished soils. As food waste always contains substantial amounts of organic matters and plant nutrients mainly originate from agriculture soil, it is often recognized as an ideal raw material for preparation of organic fertilizer used to complement soil organic carbon [4,5]. Traditional composting of food waste is sometimes not technically or economically feasible [6]. Food waste tends to release large amounts of secondary pollution, such as leachates and odor pollutants [7], during composting. A rapid fermentation technology is proposed to prepare soil fertilizer/conditioner with high organic carbon

Methods

Results

Conclusion