Correlation of Soil Physiochemical Properties, Microorganism Numbers, and Bacterial Communities Following Unburned and Burned Sugarcane Harvest

Abstract

The effects on soil properties were studied following sugarcane burning during harvesting based on the analysis of soil properties and the number of microorganisms. The soil bacterial community structure was observed using metagenomics. It was found that burned sugarcane harvesting reduced the soil moisture and total nitrogen contents and decreased the numbers of bacterial fungi and actinomycetes. Furthermore, there were decreased numbers of nitrogen-fixing and phosphate-solubilizing bacteria beneficial to plants. The Firmicutes phylum (46.79%) was found abundantly in the soil after burned sugarcane harvest. Paenibacillus (34.20%) and Bacillus (9.19%) were dominant at the genus level. On the other hand, in the soil after unburned sugarcane harvest, the diversity index was higher than that after burned sugarcane harvest. Actinobacteria (25.92%) dominated at the phylum level, and Candidatus koribacter, Gaiella, Pseudolabrys, and Sphingomonas dominated at the genus level in the unburned plots. Changing the bacterial community resulted in a change in correlation with soil properties. Therefore, the impacts from burned sugarcane harvesting should be realized, specifically that soil physiochemical and biological properties are degraded (except for some groups of bacteria) along with their functions in the soil.