Responses of soil nematode abundance and food web to cover crops in a kiwifruit orchard.

ABSTRACT: Soil biodiversity plays an important role in both agricultural productivity and ecosystem functions. Cover crop species influence the primary productivity of the ecosystem and basal resources. However, it remains poorly understood how different cover crop treatments influence the community of soil nematodes in an orchard ecosystem. In this study, field experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of cover crop treatments with different species numbers, i.e., no cover crop (CK), two cover crop species (C2), four cover crop species (C4), and eight cover crop species (C8), on weed biomass, together with composition, abundance, and metabolic footprint of soil nematode community in a kiwifruit orchard. As compared to the CK group, the groups of cover crop treatments had lower weed biom

SUBMITTER: Li QM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10435974 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature