Farm management, not soil microbial diversity, controls nutrient loss from smallholder tropical agriculture.

ABSTRACT: Tropical smallholder agriculture is undergoing rapid transformation in nutrient cycling pathways as international development efforts strongly promote greater use of mineral fertilizers to increase crop yields. These changes in nutrient availability may alter the composition of microbial communities with consequences for rates of biogeochemical processes that control nutrient losses to the environment. Ecological theory suggests that altered microbial diversity will strongly influence processes performed by relatively few microbial taxa, such as denitrification and hence nitrogen losses as nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Whether this theory helps predict nutrient losses from agriculture depends on the relative effects of microbial community change and increased nutrient availabil

SUBMITTER: Wood SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4396515 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature