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Long-term manuring increases microbial carbon use efficiency and mitigates priming effect via alleviated soil acidification and resource limitation

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Abstract

No fertilized soils (unfertilized and fallow treatments) and soils subjected to 28-year fertilization regimes, including mineral fertilization (PK and NPK) and manure amendments (NPKM and M), were incubated with or without 13C - glucose. Results showed that compared to mineral fertilization (0.64 − 0.69), the manure amendments significantly increased microbial C use efficiency (CUE) (0.76 − 0.79), mainly due to higher soil pH, lower resource stoichiometric ratios of dissolved organic C (DOC): mineral N, DOC: available P and mineral N: available P, and lower specific activities (per microbial biomass C unit) of β-1,4-glucosidase, N-acetyl-glucosaminidase and acid phosphatase. Glucose addition increased SOC mineralization, inducing positive priming effect (PE) with lower values in the manure amendments (0.11 − 0.12 mg C g−1 SOC) relative to mineral fertilization (0.25 − 0.55 mg C g−1 SOC). The PE was negatively correlated with soil pH and positively associated with resource stoichiometric ratios of DOC: mineral N, DOC: available P and mineral N: available P, mainly due to microbes mineralizing SOM to release nutrients, as indicated by the positive relationships between PE and the specific activities of N-acetyl-glucosaminidase and acid phosphatase. Concluding, relative to mineral fertilization, long-term manure amendment could increase CUE and decrease PE via alleviated soil acidification and resource limitation, thus facilitating soil C sequestration.

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Funding

This work is financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 41877105, 42007094 and 41907093) and the Innovation Talent Promotion Program of Ministry of Science and Technology.

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  1. Qiong Xiao and Yaping Huang equally contributed to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Engineering Laboratory for Improving Quality of Arable Land, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 12 South Road, Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Qiong Xiao, Yaping Huang, Lei Wu, Yanfang Tian, Qiqi Wang, Boren Wang, Minggang Xu & Wenju Zhang

  2. National Field Observation and Research Station of Farmland Ecosystem in Qiyang, Hunan Province/ Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Qiyang, 426182, People’s Republic of China

    Boren Wang

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  1. Qiong Xiao
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Correspondence to Wenju Zhang.

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Xiao, Q., Huang, Y., Wu, L. et al. Long-term manuring increases microbial carbon use efficiency and mitigates priming effect via alleviated soil acidification and resource limitation. Biol Fertil Soils 57, 925–934 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-021-01583-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-021-01583-z

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