New paper: Soil microbiome and Carbon use efficiency

As part of her PhD project in DiverIMPACTS, Bei Liu investigated the effects of crop diversification (introduction of cover crops), N-amendment (0N, 150 kg N ha^-1, 250 kg N ha^-1) and season on the diversity of the soil microbiome and its carbon use efficiency over a 2.5 year period. Neither mineral N-fertilisation nor crop diversification affected microbial carbon use efficiency. Whereas we observed that CUE differed between seasons. We found a beneficial effect of crop diversification on co-occurence network structure at a moderate N supply of 150 kg N ha^-1. But this beneficial effect was not found at high N supply of 250 kg N ha^-1. Summarising, the diversified cropping system under conventional N application rates showed positive effects on the prokaryotic soil microbiome without altering its carbon use efficiency. At moderate N-fertilisation rate, crop diversification could thus have beneficial effects for microbial diversity in agricultural soils.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06011-9