Impact of long-term fertilization practices on the abundance and composition of soil bacterial communities in Northeast China

Abstract

Soil bacterial communities mediate a wide range of ecosystem processes. In agricultural systems these processes determine soil health through bacterial roles in residue decomposition, nutrient cycling and their associations with other organisms. In this study, we investigated the abundance and composition of native soil bacterial communities under different long-term fertilization practices using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). Soil samples were taken from a 20-year fertilization trial at the Plastic-film Mulching Experiment Station in Northeast China, which including four treatments of control (CK), inorganic-N fert..