Abstract
Soil microorganisms are the core force driving the conversion of plant residues into soil organic carbon (SOC). Identifying the changes in soil microorganism responses to tillage practices is a key step in understanding the SOC sequestration potential. The aim of this study is to assess the impacts of different tillage practices on microbial communities and functions in agricultural soils. A field experiment involving no tillage (NT), rotary tillage (RT), and deep tillage (DT) in winter wheat-summer maize double cropping was performed to determine the structure of the microbial community and its functions using metagenomics. We found that tillage practices changed the composition of soil microbial communities and their functions related to the C cycle. The relative abundance of fungi in DT was significantly higher than that of the NT and RT treatments and primarily facilitated the growth of the fungi community. Moreover, DT treatment increased the relative abundance of genes involved in carbohydrate transport and metabolism genes and carbohydrate metabolism pathway genes, in addition to those encoding carbohydrate-binding modules. Therefore, we concluded that DT increases the transformation potential of straw-C to SOC in the North China Plain where large amounts of wheat and maize straw are returned to the field every year.
Highlights
Soil degradation as a result of intensified cropping systems is the main factor restricting agricultural sustainability [1]
These results provide evidence that tillage practices influence the soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration potential of the microbial community
Deep tillage is an effective practice to improve the capacity of straw degradation and SOC sequestration potential because it increases the relative abundance of the fungi community and carbohydrate metabolism and carbohydrate-binding module genes
Summary
Soil degradation as a result of intensified cropping systems is the main factor restricting agricultural sustainability [1]. The loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) leads to severe degradation, diminishing soil biodiversity, and poor productivity [2]. Improvement in SOC content occurs when the C input is higher than the C output, both of which are influenced by various factors such as land use, field management, temperatures, and nutrient availability [3,4]. The optimization of tillage management with the return of straw is being promoted for ameliorating soil conditions, which will facilitate soil quality and sustainable crop productivity [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. It is of great significance to clarify the response characteristics of soil quality to different tillage methods
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