Eleven-year mulching and tillage practices alter the soil quality and bacterial community composition in Northeast China

ABSTRACT

Conservation management is necessary to ensure soil sustainability. We investigated the response of soil chemical, biological properties, and bacterial community to 11 years of different mulch and tillage practices in an aeolian sandy soil in a maize continuous cropping system. Treatments included: no-till + straw coverage (ZT+R), rotary tillage + straw coverage (RT+R), and normal tillage (CT). Compared to CT, ZT+R and RT+R significantly increased total organic carbon (TOC) content, C:N ratio, available nitrogen (AN) content, and acid phosphatase (ACP) and urease activities, while decreasing soil pH in topsoil and subsoil. Moreover, RT+R enhanced C:N ratio and AN content and ACP and urease activities in deep soil. ZT+R increased bacterial richness and diversity; dominant phyla of Actinobacteria and Acidobacteria were found in topsoil and Gemmatimonadetes in subsoil and deep soil. However, RT+R showed negative effects on soil bacterial diversity and bacterial community because of severe soil disturbance. Redundancy analysis revealed that soil chemical properties (pH and TOC) are closely associated with soil bacterial communities. Therefore, long-term land management plays an important role in shaping microbial functional profiles. ZT+R is optimum for the enhancement of soil chemical properties and bacterial communities of aeolian sandy soils with a continuous cropping system.

KEYWORDS:

• Conservation agriculture
• straw incorporation
• agricultural management practice
• soil enzymatic activity
• soil microbe
• aeolian sandy soil

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Yanhe Cheng, the director of Linhai Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center for his helpful assistance in field experiment.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Author contributions

Gang Li and Qingjun Cao designed the experiment; Fentuan Yang, Zhengguo Cui, Fanli Kong, Yang Lu and Enping Zhang performed the experiments, Xiaoli Jiang analyzed the data; Qingjun Cao wrote the manuscript with contributions from other coauthors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Administration of Central Funds Guiding the Local Science and Technology Development (202002067JC), National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD0300202), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M621228), Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation funds for Jilin province (CXGC2017TD011), and Introduction of High-level Talents and Technological Innovation Funding Project of Jilin province (91993802).