Variation in microbial biomass and community composition based on
long-term fertilization regimes in paddy soil profiles
Abstract
Fertilization is a common approach to increase or sustain soil
fertility, but its impact on microbial biomass and community structure
remains controversial, particularly in paddy soils. In this study, we
investigated the effect of different long-term fertilization strategies,
beginning in 1986, namely no fertilization, mineral fertilization,
mineral fertilization combined with rice straw or chicken manure, on
microbial biomass and community composition at four soil depths (0–10,
10–20, 20–30, and 30–40 cm). The extracted soil phospholipid fatty
acids (PLFAs) were pooled into gram-positive (G+) bacteria,
gram-negative (G−) bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes groups. Results
showed that irrespective of the fertilization type, the abundance of
PLFAs decreased with soil depth in the following order due to nutrient
decrease along soil profiles: fungi > G− bacteria
> G+ bacteria > actinomycetes. Mineral
fertilization induced G+ bacteria more than G− bacteria and
actinomycetes, which suggested that the inorganic nutrients in mineral
fertilizers are utilized more by G+ bacteria than by other microbial
groups. Partial replacement of mineral fertilizer with manure further
stimulates G+ bacteria at all depths. Redundancy analysis showed obvious
microbial separation at the 0−20 and 20−40 cm soil depths due to the
rhizodeposition effect and also revealed that the microbial communities
were significantly correlated with nutrient content (soil organic carbon
and available N) and pH. Overall, our findings highlight microbial
community shifts due to different fertilizer types, which provides basic
information for understanding how substrate availability controls the
structure of soil microbial communities in paddy soil systems.