Leguminous green manure intercropping changes the soil microbial community and increases soil nutrients and key quality components of tea leaves

Abstract

Intercropping, a green and sustainable planting pattern, has demonstrated positive effects on plant growth and the soil environment. However, there is currently little research on the influence of intercropping leguminous plants and using them as green manure on the soil environment and tea quality. During the profuse flowering period of Chinese milkvetch, the contents of tea amino acids and soluble sugar in intercropping tea plants with soybean increased by 6.89 and 54.58%. Moreover, there was 27.42% increase in soil ammonium nitrogen and 21.63% increase in available nitrogen. When Chinese milkvetch was returned to soil for 1 month during its profuse flowering period, the soybean and Chinese milkvetch as green manure enhanced tea amino acids and soluble sugar by 9.11 and 33.96%, and soil ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and available nitrogen increased by 25.04, 77.84, and 48.90%. Intercropping systems also have positive effects on tea quality components, soil fertility, and soil microbial communities during the profuse flowering period of soybeans and when soybeans with this period were returned to the field for 1 month. Furthermore, the soil fertility index was significantly increased, especially in the intercropping system of tea-soybean-Chinese milkvetch. The soil bacterial community complexity and fungal community interactions were significantly increased. Soil pH, nitrate nitrogen, and available phosphorus were found to be crucial influencing factors on soil microbial communities, specifically bacterial communities. These results highlight the significance of optimizing intercropping systems to improve the soil environment and tea quality components. They also provide a theoretical foundation for promoting the sustainable development of tea plantations.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31972460, 31870680), the China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (CARS-19), Jiangsu Agriculture Science and Technology Innovation Fund (CX(20)2004), the Key Research and Development Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2019379), the Changzhou Agriculture Science and Technology Support Program (CE20212017), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and the Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent (2022ZB340).

Author contributions

Y.D., T.W., X.Z., and W.F. conceived this project and designed the experiments. Y.D., T.W., X.L., Y.C., L.L., and Y.M. carried out the experiments and analyzed the data. D.Y., Z.Z., and X.Z. drafted the manuscript. Y.D. finalized the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

Data availability statement

All relevant data in this study are provided in the article and its supplementary files. The raw sequences of the 16S rRNA gene and ITS were submitted to the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under BioProject accession number PRJNA857577.

Conflict of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data is available at Horticulture Research online.

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