Soil health and microbial network analysis in a wheat-maize cropping system under different wheat yields

Highlights

	● Improving soil health has the potential to increase wheat yields.
	● Fields with maximum wheat yield had more complex soil bacterial and fungal networks.
	● Soil health index at a depth of 0–15 cm was positively correlated with wheat yield.
	● Microbial phyla, Actinobacteria, Thaumarchaeota, and Ascomycota, were the important drivers of soil health.

Abstract

Healthy soil is crucial for sustainable agriculture with soil microbiomes being key to soil health. However, comprehensive assessments of soil health and microbial community structures under different wheat yields have not been made. Therefore, soil samples were collected from wheat fields with differing yields at depths of 0–15 and 15–30 cm. The yields were categorized as low (Y1, 3.75 t·ha⁻¹), medium (Y2, 6.00 t·ha⁻¹), high (Y3, 8.25 t·ha⁻¹), and maximum (Y4, 10.1 t·ha⁻¹), and soil health and microbial communities determined. The results showed that both yield category and soil depth significantly influenced SOC, TN, mineral nitrogen, AP and AK, enzyme activity, and soil bacterial communities. The soil health index in Y4 (0.51–0.87) was significantly higher than in Y3 (0.39–0.63), Y2 (0.27–0.45), and Y1 (0.21–0.52) at both 0–15 and 15–30 cm (expect Y1). Significant correlation was only found between soil health index at 0–15 cm and wheat yield, not at 15–30 cm. The bacterial and fungal network structure in Y4 was more complex and densely connected. Actinobacteria, Thaumarchaeota, and Ascomycota were identified as key drivers of soil health. Based on these results, the regulation of microbes has the potential to improve soil health and crop yields.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Soil health index / soil microbial network / subsoil / topsoil / yield categories

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2024570 contains supplementary materials (Tables S1–S3).

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFD1901501).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xinzhan Sun, Tengteng Li, and Jiangzhou Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)