Soil microorganisms play an essential role in soil ecosystem processes such as organic matter decomposition, nutrient cycling, and plant nutrient availability. The land use for greenhouse cultivation has been increasing continuously, which involves an intensive input of agricultural materials to enhance productivity; however, relatively little is known about bacterial communities in greenhouse soils. To assess the effects of environmental factors on the soil bacterial diversity and community composition, a total of 187 greenhouse soil samples collected across Korea were subjected to bacterial 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing analysis. A total of 11,865 operational taxonomic units at a 97% similarity cutoff level were detected from 847,560 sequences. Among nine soil factors evaluated; pH, electrical conductivity (EC), exchangeable cations (Ca, Mg, Na, and K), available PO, organic matter, and NO-N, soil pH was most strongly correlated with bacterial richness (polynomial regression, pH: R = 0.1683, P < 0.001) and diversity (pH: R = 0.1765, P < 0.001). Community dissimilarities (Bray-Curtis distance) were positively correlated with Euclidean distance for pH and EC (Mantel test, pH: r = 0.2672, P < 0.001; EC: r = 0.1473, P < 0.001). Among dominant phyla (> 1%), the relative abundances of Proteobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Chloroflexi, and Planctomycetes were also more strongly correlated with pH and EC values, compared with other soil cation contents, such as Ca, Mg, Na, and K. Our results suggest that, despite the heterogeneity of various environmental variables, the bacterial communities of the intensively cultivated greenhouse soils were particularly influenced by soil pH and EC. These findings therefore shed light on the soil microbial ecology of greenhouse cultivation, which should be helpful for devising effective management strategies to enhance soil microbial diversity and improving crop productivity.

This survey was conducted to promote the environment-friendly use and recycling of livestock feces by obtaining information about the current state of livestock feces composts manufactured in Gyeonggi Province. Therefore, some aspects of quality and manufacturing techniques of livestock feces composts (LFCs) were examined especially in relation to the LFCs quality standard (LQS). By surveying the 70 composting plants in Gyeonggi Province, the total commercial production of LFCs in 2008 was estimated to be about 480,000 Mg year -1 and they were manufactured mainly by using both mechanical mixer and bottom air blower. LFCs were composed mainly of chicken feces 29.2%, pig+chicken feces 23.1%, pig feces 20.0%, livestock feces+oil cake 12.3%, pig+chicken+cattle feces 10.8% and pig+cattle feces 4.6%. On the basis of the current official standard which was revised on March 2010, 11 composts out of surveyed 76 ones did not meet the LQS due to inadequate content of water (5), OM/N (1), NaCl (2) and Zn (3). The satisfaction rate to LQS by manufacturers was 100% in the composts produced by farmer's cooperative societies, 80.7% by civil factories, and 44.4% by farming guilds, respectively. The OM/N declined by adding chicken feces and oil cake, while Ca content was increased by the addition of chicken feces and NaCl was increased by adding cattle feces.

To promote the practical use of livestock manure compost (LC) for paddy rice cultivation, the fertilization efficiency of nutrients in LCs was investigated compared to that of chemical fertilizer. This experiment was conducted at rice field in Hwaseong, Korea, with 6 treatments by each of 3 kinds of tested LCs, cattle manure compost (CaC), swine manure compost (SwC) and chicken manure compost (ChC). The treatments consisted of 3 application levels of LCs and 3 chemical fertilizer treatments having the same application levels with LCs. NH 4 -N content in soil became higher according to the increase in the urea application rate, while it became lower in LC plots than in urea plots, and statistically had no significant difference among LC plots. There was a close relationship between phosphate fertilization rate and the increment of soil available phosphate content after experiment resulting y = 0.1788x -6.169 (R 2 = 0.9425) when applied fused superphosphate fertilizer, and y = 0.0662x -2.689 (R 2 = 0.9315) when applied LC at the equivalent rates to phosphate input (x: phosphate application rate, kg ha