Late-season rice increased the contribution of glomalin rather than amino sugar to soil organic carbon in a double-season paddy soil

Highlights

● Bacterial and fungal necromass in soil showed opposite trends with rice growth.

● The contribution of GRSP increased but ASs decreased to SOC with rice growth.

● Microbial residues were mainly influenced by living microbial biomass.

Abstract

Microbial residues play an important role in soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration. Paddy fields are important agricultural ecosystems involved in the carbon cycle; however, microbial residues change with rice growth in soil from double-season rice, and the influence of these residues on SOC sequestration is uncertain. Here, we investigated the microbial residues (amino sugars (AS) and glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP)) content and their contribution to SOC during the tillering stage (TS), heading stage (HS), and ripening stage (RS) in both early- and late-season rice in a double-cropping rice-growing area wherein the straw is returned after the early-season rice is harvested. Microbial biomass significantly increased from the early- to the late-season. In addition, the content of bacterial residues decreased (7.94%, P=0.008), while the fungal residues increased (8.15%, P<0.001) in the late-season compared with the early-season, suggesting that bacterial residues were recycled more rapidly than fungal residues. Amino sugar content and its contribution to SOC decreased from the TS to the RS in the late-season soil, probably because of the nutrient requirements of the rapidly growing rice. The contribution of GRSP to SOC increased by 10.5%, whereas that of ASs decreased by 4.5% from the early- to the late-season. Living soil microbes rather than soil physicochemical properties were the main factors influencing microbial residue accumulation. The results of this study provide a theoretical basis from a microbial perspective which will facilitate future efforts to enhance SOC sequestration during paddy field management.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

paddy soil / microbial residues / amino sugar / glomalin-related soil protein / double-season rice

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of New Technology in Rice Breeding (Grant No. 2020B1212060047), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 42007041, 32101827), Funding from South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. QNXM-05), and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2022A1515010822). We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the above funding.

Authors’ contributions

Jing Zhang and Xiaozhe Bao conceptualized and administered the project and acquired funding. Xiaozhe Bao and Taotao Yang collected the samples. Peiyue Wang performed the experiments. Peiyue Wang, Xiaozhe Bao, and Jing Zhang performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript. Bin Zhang, Zhanfeng Liu, and Taotao Yang helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions. All authors contributed to the revisions during the editing process. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Competing interests

The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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