Comparative Analysis of Soil Microbial Diversity Under Different Tillage Practices
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22688146Keywords:
soil microbiome, tillage, 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, soil organic carbon, no-till, microbial diversityAbstract
Tillage intensity is widely thought to shape soil microbial community structure, but long-term, multi-site
comparisons that separate tillage effects from confounding site and management variation remain relatively
scarce. We characterised bacterial and archaeal community composition by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing
in topsoil (0-15 cm) collected from four paired-site long-term tillage trials, each comparing conventional
mouldboard-plough tillage, reduced (chisel-plough) tillage, and no-till management maintained for a minimum of
eleven years, sampled across three consecutive growing seasons. No-till soils showed significantly higher
Shannon diversity than conventional tillage soils at all four sites (mean difference 0.31 units, linear mixed model
P<0.001), with reduced tillage intermediate and statistically distinguishable from both other treatments at three of
four sites. Community composition, assessed by weighted UniFrac distance, separated clearly by tillage treatment
(PERMANOVA R2=0.18, P=0.001) after accounting for site and year as blocking factors, driven substantially by a
higher relative abundance of Acidobacteria and Verrucomicrobia and a lower relative abundance of Proteobacteria
in no-till relative to conventional tillage soils. Soil organic carbon was significantly higher under no-till at all four
sites (mean difference 4.8 g/kg, P<0.001) and was positively correlated with Shannon diversity across the full
dataset (Pearson r=0.52, P<0.001), while functional prediction using PICRUSt2 showed reduced tillage and no-till
soils enriched for predicted genes involved in complex carbohydrate degradation relative to conventional tillage.
These results support a consistent, multi-site association between reduced tillage intensity and increased soil
bacterial diversity, most plausibly mediated through the accumulation of soil organic carbon and the reduced
physical disturbance of surface soil aggregates that occurs when tillage frequency and depth are decreased.
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