Distinct soil microbial diversity under long-term organic and conventional farming

Low-input agricultural systems aim at reducing the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in order to improve sustainable production and ecosystem health. Despite the integral role of the soil microbiome in agricultural production, we still have a limited understanding of the complex response of microbial diversity to organic and conventional farming. Here we report on the structural response of the soil microbiome to more than two decades of different agricultural management in a long-term field experiment using a high-throughput pyrosequencing approach of bacterial and fungal ribosomal markers. Organic farming increased richness, decreased evenness, reduced dispersion and shifted the structure of the…

• NS
  National Science Foundation
• UO
  University of Southern California
• MU
  McGill University
• UO
  University of Glasgow
• SN
  Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
• SL
  Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet
• BF
  Bundesamt für Landwirtschaft
• A
  Agroscope
• FF
  Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau