Abstract
Soil salinization has become one of the major environmental issues in many parts of the world. However, how saline soils influence plant cuticular wax depositions and their contribution to soil organic carbon (SOC) is still not clear. Soil chemical properties, lipids and microbial diversity, leaf cuticular waxes and their degradation in soil, were compared between wetland meadow (WM, pH 8.75) and typical meadow (TM, pH8.02). Higher wax coverage was observed on plants located in TM than WM, which was mainly attributed to the higher water-soluble salts (WSS) in TM. The contents of soil organic carbon (SOC) were lower in WM than TM, whereas higher contents of soil lipids were observed in WM than TM at 10–20 cm and 20–30 cm soil layers, suggesting that the lipid transformation differed between the two soils. Plant wax degradation analysis indicated that wax degraded slower in WM than TM, and higher degradation rates were observed under lower pH than higher pH in vitro experiment, suggesting that higher lipid contents in WM might be attributed to low lipid degradation rate induced by high pH level. Structure equation module analysis further indicated that soil pH influenced the diversity and abundance of soil bacterial, which further altered the soil lipid transformation and SOC storage. Our results suggested that, in saline soils, WSS influenced more on plant wax deposition, whereas the soil pH was the principal factor influencing the soil microbe communities, which further influenced the lipid transformation, and ultimately SOC.
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The data presented in this study are available on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Wei Tang, Maofeng Chai, Yue Sun, Lanlan Ding, Xudong Qu, for their help in field sampling.
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The project was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFE1304303) and the “First Class Grassland Science Discipline” program in Shandong Province, China.
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JY: Investigation, Software, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing. TW: Software, Data curation, Formal analysis. WZ: Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Validation. YS: Investigation, Methodology, Visualization. YN: Conceptualization, Data curation. YG: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing - review & editing.
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Yang, J., Wang, T., Sun, Y. et al. Soil pH is the Primary Factor Driving the Transformation of Plant Cuticular Wax in Saline Soils. J Soil Sci Plant Nutr (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-024-01761-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-024-01761-6