Abstract
Soil physiochemical properties are regulated by cropping practices, but little is known about how tillage influences soil microbial community diversity and functions. Here, we assessed soil bacterial community assembly and functional profiles in relation to tillage. Soils, collected in 2018 from a 17-year field experiment in northwestern China, were analyzed using high-throughput sequencing and the PICRUSt approach. The taxonomic diversity of bacterial communities was dominated primarily by the phyla Proteobacteria (32–56%), Bacteroidetes (12–33%), and Actinobacteria (17–27%). Alpha diversity (Chao1, Shannon, Simpson, and operational taxonomic unit (OTU) richness) was highest under no-tillage with crop residue removed (NT). Crop residue retention on the soil surface (NTS) or incorporated into soil (TS) promoted the abundance of Proteobacteria by 16 to 74% as compared to conventional tillage (T). Tillage practices mainly affected the pathways of soil metabolism, genetic information processing, and environmental information processing. Soil organic C and NH4–N were the principal contributors to the diversity and composition of soil microbiota, whereas soil pH, total nitrogen, total P, and moisture had little effect. Our results suggest that long-term conservation practices with no-tillage and crop residue retention shape soil bacterial community composition through modifying soil physicochemical properties and promoting the metabolic function of soil microbiomes.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 836 |
Journal | Microorganisms |
Volume | 8 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: The research was supported by the Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, Gansu Agricultural University (GSCS‐2017‐12), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31761143004 and 31801320), and the Fostering Foundation for Excellent Ph.D. Dissertations of Gansu Agricultural University (YB2018002).
Funding Information:
The research was supported by the Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, Gansu Agricultural University (GSCS-2017-12), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31761143004 and 31801320), and the Fostering Foundation for Excellent Ph.D. Dissertations of Gansu Agricultural University (YB2018002). We appreciate the excellent technical assistance for field sampling and laboratory tests provided by undergrade and graduate students at the Gansu Agricultural University Rainfed Agricultural Experimental Station.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- Conservation tillage
- Field pea
- High-throughput sequencing
- PICRUSt
- Soil microbial community