Tree rows in temperate agroforestry croplands alter the composition of soil bacterial communities.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Tree-based intercropping (agroforestry) has been advocated to reduce adverse environmental impacts of conventional arable cropping. Modern agroforestry systems in the temperate zone are alley-cropping systems that combine rows of fast-growing trees with rows of arable crops. Soil microbial communities in these systems have been investigated intensively; however, molecular studies with high taxonomical resolution are scarce.

Methods

Here, we assessed the effect of temperate agroforestry on the abundance, diversity and composition of soil bacterial communities at three paired poplar-based alley cropping and conventional monoculture cropland systems using real-time PCR and Illumina sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Two of the three systems grew summer barley (H

SUBMITTER: Beule L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7875383 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature