Soil quality and microbes in organic and conventional farming systems

Abstract

Compared to conventional farming practices, organic farming practices have an advantage over improving soil quality and gain worldwide acceptance. Here we summarize soil properties, microbial biomass, abundance and diversity of microbes between organic and conventional soil, as well as advantages and disadvantages of various molecular approaches for assessing the diversity of microbial communities. The results confirm that higher levels of total and organic C, total N and soluble organic C are observed in all of the organic soil. However, other soil properties are inconsistent between organic and conventional soil. Consistently, all the studies show that higher levels of microbial biomass C and N are found in organic soil with different plants. Nevertheless, different molecular approaches for assessing the diversity of microbial communities could lead to different results in the same study. In addition, most studies consider that organic management can improve the abundance and diversity of total bacteria and fungi. Knowledge and assessment of organic and conventional farming systems still need to be evaluated in the future work. Key words: Organic and conventional soil, microbial biomass, abundance, diversity, soil properties.