Exploring the Synergistic Impacts of Cover Crops and Fertilization on Soil Microbial Metabolic Diversity in Dryland Soybean Production Systems Using Biolog EcoPlates

The metabolic diversity of soil microbiota embodies diverse functional capabilities that support ecosystem resilience, driving essential biogeochemical processes and facilitating the optimization sustainable agricultural systems. Integrating cover crops into systems cultivates a array activities among microbes, synergistically enhancing services bolstering health for productive farming practices. In an effort to gain deeper insights expand our knowledge, we conducted study examining effects fertilizer sources, thereby shedding light on their combined impacts activity dynamics microbial communities. this investigation, employed split-plot design with two factors: (a) crop three solo species—Cereal rye (Secale cereale), wheat (Triticum aestivum), hairy vetch (Vicia villosa), one mixture mustard (Brassica rapa) cereal cereale) (CC-mix), (b) Fertilizer source includes poultry litter, chemical fertilizer, no-fertilizer treatments. We assessed potential by using carbon substrates utilizing Biolog EcoPlates. findings revealed plots CC-mix treatment exhibited greater compared other treatments, while litter demonstrated higher activity. Furthermore, both factors predominantly metabolized carbohydrates polymers substrate categories. principal component analysis accounted 46.4% variance, collectively represented PC1 PC2, emphasizing substantial contributions carbohydrates, amino acids, carboxylic acids observed diversity. Canonical correspondence pH had positively correlated diversity, whereas total (TC), nitrogen (TN), water-stable aggregates (WSA) showed negative correlation. conclusion, cropping type notable impact exhibiting more pronounced influence than individual