title: No tillage combined with crop rotation improves soil microbial community composition and metabolic activity.
abstract: Soil microbial community can vary with different agricultural managements, which in turn can affect soil quality. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of long-term tillage practice (no tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT)) and crop rotation (maize-soybean (MS) rotation and monoculture maize (MM)) on soil microbial community composition and metabolic capacity in different soil layers. Long-term NT increased the soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN) mainly at the 0-5 cm depth which was accompanied with a greater microbial abundance. The greater fungi-to-bacteria (F/B) ratio was found in NTMS at the 0-5 cm depth. Both tillage and crop rotation had a significant effect on the metabolic activity, with the greatest average well color development (AWCD) value in NTMS soil at all three soil depths. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that the shift in microbial community composition was accompanied with the changes in capacity of utilizing different carbon substrates. Therefore, no tillage combined with crop rotation could improve soil biological quality and make agricultural systems more sustainable.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Bingjie
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China. jiashuxia@neigae.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Shuxia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.
authors.forename: Shixiu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, K1A 0C6, Canada.
authors.forename: Neil B
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: McLaughlin
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.
authors.forename: Aizhen
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.
authors.forename: Xuewen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100049, China.
authors.forename: Siyi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 4888 Shengbei Street, Changchun, Jilin, 130102, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoping
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods*; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry; D002681:China; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000378:metabolism; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000737:chemistry; D012399:Rotation; D012987:Soil / Q000737:chemistry*; D012988:Soil Microbiology / Q000592:standards*; D013025:Glycine max / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000378:metabolism; D003313:Zea mays / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D012987:Soil; D002244:Carbon; D009584:Nitrogen
keywords: Carbon source; Crop residue; Crop rotation; Metabolic activity; Microbial composition; No tillage