Abstract
Aims
The degradation and transformation of soil organic nitrogen (SON) in semi-arid steppe are regulated by a series of enzymes involved in nitrogen(N) hydrolysis, the influence of N and carbon (C) additions on the soil N reserves, activities of N-hydrolyzing enzymes, and their relationships remain unclear.
Methods
In the Inner Mongolia prairie of China, a field experiment was conducted to study the effects of N (0, 25, 50, 100, 200 kg N ha−1 yr−1) and C (0, 250, 500 kg C ha−1 yr−1) additions on SON fractions and their relationships with N-hydrolyzing enzymes.
Results
Our results indicated that N addition significantly increased active-SON and N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) activities and decreased urease activities. C addition significantly increased microbial biomass carbon (MBC), NAG, and urease activities, and decreased protease activity and hydrolyzable unknown-N. N and C additions interacted affected the microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN), MBC: MBN, protease, and amidase activities. Structural equation modeling suggested that N addition had a direct positive effect on hydrolyzable NH4+-N and amino acid-N. Furthermore, N addition indirectly affected amino sugar-N through MBN and the activities of NAG and protease. C addition directly affected urease activity.
Conclusion
Our findings suggest that active-SON responded significantly to N addition, whereas stable-SON did not. Moreover, N-hydrolysis enzymes, especially NAG and proteases, play a fundamental role in the N turnover under N and C additions in semi-arid steppe soils. As such, our work provides useful information for the development of sustainable steppe farming practices.
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Data availability
Data will be made available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully appreciate all our colleagues who worked on this field trial at the Erguna Forest-Grassland Ecotone Ecosystem Research Station. This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (41877108); the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy (XDA280200); Major Program of Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IAEMP202201).
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Muyu Tian: data curation, formal analysis, visualization, and writing – original draft. Nan Jiang: revising the article and critically for important intellectual content. Chunjia Yu: data curation, Yulan Zhang and Weiwen Qiu: investigation and methodology. Jingkuan Wang and Zhenhua Chen: funding acquisition, conceptualization, resources, supervision, project administration, review and editing. Lijun Chen: revising and editing the article. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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Tian, M., Jiang, N., Yu, C. et al. Sensitivity of active and stable organic nitrogen to nitrogen and carbon additions: insights from enzymatic hydrolyses in a semi-arid steppe. Plant Soil (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06656-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-024-06656-0