Tea plantation intercropping green manure enhances soil functional microbial abundance and multifunctionality resistance to drying-rewetting cycles

Abstract

Climate change leads to more serious drying-rewetting alternation disturbance, which furtherly affects soil ecosystem function and agriculture production. Intercropping green manure, as an ancient agricultural practice, can improve the physical, chemical, and biological fertility of soil in tea plantation. However, the effects of intercropping green manure on soil multifunctional resistance to drying-rewetting disturbance in tea plantation has not been reported. In this study, the effects of different green manure practices over four years (tea plant monoculture, tea plant and soybean intercropping, tea plant and soybean + milk vetch intercropping) on soil multifunctionality resistance to drying-rewetting cycles, and the pivotal influencing factors were investigated. We used quantitative PCR array and analysis of multiple enzyme activities to characterize the abundance of functional genes and ecosystem multifunctionality, respectively. Compared with tea plantation monoculture, tea plant intercropping soybean and soybean + milk vetch significantly increased multifunctionality resistance by 12.07% and 25.86%, respectively. Random forest analysis indicated that rather than the diversity, the abundance of functional genes was the major drive of multifunctionality resistance. The structure equation model further proved that tea plantation intercropping green manure could improve the abundance of C cycling related functional genes mediated by soil properties, and ultimately increased multifunctionality resistance to drying-rewetting disturbance. Therefore, tea plantation intercropping green manure is an effective approach to maintain the multifunctionality resistance, which is conducive to maintain the soil nutrient supply capacity and tea production under the disturbance of drying-rewetting alternation.