Organic Farming Improves Soil Microbial Abundance and Diversity under Greenhouse Condition: A Case Study in Shanghai (Eastern China)

Jianli Liao, Yun Liang and Danfeng Huang
Additional contact information
Jianli Liao: Key Laboratory of Urban Agriculture (South), Ministry of Agriculture, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Yun Liang: Key Laboratory of Urban Agriculture (South), Ministry of Agriculture, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Danfeng Huang: Key Laboratory of Urban Agriculture (South), Ministry of Agriculture, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-16

Abstract: Agricultural practices have significant impacts on soil properties and microbial communities; however, little is known about their responses to open field and plastic tunnels under organic and conventional farming. We therefore investigated the responses of soil chemical variables and microbial communities to different agricultural management and cultivation types, including organic management in open field (OF), organic management in plastic tunnels (OP), conventional management in open field (CF) and conventional management in plastic tunnels (CP), by using a pyrosequencing approach of 16S rRNA gene amplicon. Both factors had significant influences on the soil properties and microbial communities. Organic farming increased the nutrient-related soil variables compared to conventional farming regardless of cultivation type, especially for the available N and P, which were increased by 137% and 711%, respectively, in OP compared to CP. Additionally, OP had the highest microbial abundance and diversity among treatments, whereas no difference was found between OF, CF and CP. Furthermore, OP possessed diverse differential bacteria which were mainly related to the organic material turnover (e.g., Roseiflexus , Planctomyces and Butyrivibrio ) and plant growth promotion (e.g., Nostoc , Glycomyces and Bacillus ). Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that pH, electrical conductivity (EC), nutrient levels (e.g., available N and available P) and total Zn content were significantly correlated to the structure of the microbial community. Overall, our results showed that the long-term organic farming with high fertilizer input increased soil nutrient levels and microbial abundance and diversity under plastic-tunnel condition compared to other cultivation systems.

Keywords: organic farming; soil microbiota; agricultural practice; greenhouse; horticultural soil; soil properties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/10/3825/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/10/3825/ (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:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:10:p:3825-:d:177479

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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