Earthworm communities and microbial metabolic activity and diversity under conventional, feed and biogas cropping systems as affected by tillage practices

Understanding management factors driving soil biota is pivotal to improve the sustainability of cropping systems, especially given emergence new systems induced by bioeconomy. Here, we investigated combined effects tillage practices (tillage versus no-tillage) and contrasted including conventional, feed biogas on earthworm communities microbial metabolic activity diversity (using Biolog Ecoplate). After three years, our results revealed that overrode effect while being also detrimental for both compared with no-tillage. By contrast, no-tillage had generally a beneficial abundance. More importantly, under no-tillage, increased which was likely due higher crop use digestate instead manure slurry conventional system. Taken together, findings show are very sensitive tillage. Moreover, rapidly affected type system, suggesting it would be better indicator detect short-term changes in functioning following change land use. Our study indicates that, provided included, system high can promote farming practices, leading improvement ecosystem service delivery.