Abstract
Purpose
Secondary salinization resulting from long–term greenhouse cultivation has become a major factor adversely influencing soil functions such as nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. Nevertheless, how salinity effects N2O emissions and underlying microbial mechanisms remains largely unclear.
Materials and methods
We carried out an investigation over one growing season into in situ N2O flux under long–term greenhouse cultivation. After the trials, we collected soil samples to measure potential nitrification and denitrification rates via laboratory incubations using 15N–labelled KNO3 in combination with acetylene inhibition. High–throughput qPCR was used to measure the changes in the abundance of N cycling–related functional genes in the soils.
Results
Soil salinity significantly promoted N2O emissions (P < 0.001), and the increase in N2O emissions was mainly attributed to the nitrification process, not the denitrification process. However, we found that the abundance of N–cycling–related genes had a downward trend with increasing soil salinity, and showed different patterns with the corresponding changes in soil potential nitrification rates across the treatments. In addition, the structural equation modelling showed that aboveground crop biomass was the second most important factor driving soil N2O emissions.
Conclusions
These findings show that salt stress can increase N2O emissions via nitrification processes in subtropical agricultural soils. Given the prevalence of salt stress worldwide, it is necessary to incorporate soil salinity into models of global N2O emissions.
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Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
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Acknowledgements
This study was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32171635 and No. 31870497), the East China Normal University Multifunctional Platform for Innovation (008), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.
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XZ designed the experiment; XZ, MD and HZ performed the experiments; XZ contributed the materials and agents; MD and XZ wrote the manuscript; XT made large contributions to the revision of the manuscript and all authors contributed to discussions on the manuscript.
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Dong, M., Zuo, H., Tian, X. et al. Salinity decouples the relationships between microbial functional gene abundance and N2O emissions in subtropical agricultural soils. J Soils Sediments 24, 808–818 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03658-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03658-w