The Effect of Tillage System and Crop Rotation on Soil Microbial Diversity and Composition in a Subtropical Acrisol

Abstract

Agricultural management alters physical and chemical soil properties, which directly affects microbial life strategies and community composition. The microbial community drives important nutrient cycling processes that can influence soil quality, cropping productivity and environmental sustainability. In this research, a long-term agricultural experiment in a subtropical Acrisol was studied in south Brazil. The plots at this site represent two tillage systems, two nitrogen fertilization regimes and three crop rotation systems. Using Illumina high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene, the archaeal and bacterial composition was determined from phylum to species level in the different plot treatments. The relative abundance of these taxes was correlated with measured soil properties. The P, Mg, total organic carbon, total N and mineral N were significantly higher in the no-tillage system. The microbial diversity was higher in the notillage system at order, family, genus and species level. In addition, overall microbial composition changed significantly between conventional tillage and no-tillage systems. Anaerobic bacteria, such as clostridia, dominate in no-tilled soil as well as anaerobic methanogenic archaea, which were detected only in the no-tillage system. Microbial diversity was higher in plots in which only cereals (oat and maize) were grown. Soil management influenced soil biodiversity on Acrisol by change of composition and abundance of individual species. OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2012, 4 376

Soil resilience and recovery: rapid community responses to management changes

“…Many studies show differences in communities from soils with contrasting treatments Garbeva et al 2008;Geisseler and Scow 2014;de Quadros et al 2012;Zhalnina et al 2013). In non-agricultural systems there is evidence for the development of distinct bacterial communities selected over centuries (Cutler et al 2014;Jangid et al 2011) and fungal communities over decades (Hogberg et al 2014) with soil pH a major factor in microbial community structure at continental, landscape and field scale (Fierer and Jackson 2006;Griffiths et al 2011;Zhalnina et al 2015).…”

Effect of Conservational and Conventional Tillage Systems on Functional Soil Archaea Diversity in Wheat-Pea Rotation Field

“…On the contrary, archaea were found not to be affected by the different forms of tillage practices in the experiment conducted by Kaurin et al (2015) who compared minimum tillage to conventional mouldboard ploughing. In no-tilled soil, physical disturbance is absent hence there is less soil aeration than in tilled soils and this may promote the growth of anaerobic microbes (Dorr de Quadros et al, 2012). Withdrawal of tillage in NT gave significantly high Shannon species diversity index and Inverse Simpson evenness index; however, only numerically high means were obtained for Chao1 richness estimator and number of observed species.…”

“…In agricultural fields, tillage practices negatively affect soil chemical, physical and biological properties by exacerbating soil degradation which may consequently trigger changes in the soil microbial community structure and composition (Dorr de Quadros et al, 2012). It is widely accepted that no-till, residue retention, cover crops and crop rotations are conservation agriculture practices that protect soil, water, nutrients and increase microbial activity and biomass (Feng, 2003).…”

Culture-Independent Molecular Tools for Soil and Rhizosphere Microbiology

“…Still, a few studies have used this method to measure diversity in microbial communities. For instance, soil management practices such as tillage was reported to affect microbial diversity in a subtropical acrisol [170]. Another study documented distinct fungal community compositions in green roofs and five city parks in New York City, with only 54% of taxonomic group overlap between green roof media and park soils [171].…”