Stubble Management Plays a Greater Role than Tillage Practice in Shaping Soil Microbiome Structure and Function

Chang Xu, Ruey Toh, Jishun Li, Yi Zhou () and Matthew D. Denton
Additional contact information
Chang Xu: School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia
Ruey Toh: School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia
Jishun Li: Ecology Institute of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan 250013, China
Yi Zhou: School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia
Matthew D. Denton: School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Urrbrae, SA 5064, Australia

Agriculture, 2025, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-16

Abstract: Tillage and stubble management play crucial roles in conservation agriculture, exerting a considerable influence on soil properties. This study aims to focus on the gaps in our understanding of how tillage and stubble management interact to affect the taxonomic and functional structure of the soil microbiome. Soil samples were collected from a long-term field trial implementing no tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) with stubble retention and removal. Metagenomic sequencing facilitated the assembly of a gene catalog comprising 4.36 billion non-redundant genes. Stubble management markedly altered both the taxonomic and functional composition of the prokaryotic community, the addition of stubble caused a significant increase in Proteobacteria, but a decrease in Chloroflexi compared with no stubble. The key prokaryotic species and gene functions contributing most to the dissimilarity of the prokaryotic communities between the treatments with and without stubble were identified, including Rhodospirillum sp. Stubble retention increased the availability of carbon resources in the soil, resulting in a higher proportion of genes functional for metabolic activity and plant–pathogen interactions. However, tillage practice did not influence the structure or diversity of the soil prokaryote community. Our findings identify the target microbial species for future isolation, enabling the development of eco-friendly biofertilizers to promote sustainable agriculture.

Keywords: wheat; maize; microbes; straw; rhizosphere (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/2/143/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/15/2/143/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:15:y:2025:i:2:p:143-:d:1564097

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().