Change of soil microbial community under long-term fertilization in a reclaimed sandy agricultural ecosystem

The importance of soil microbial flora in agro-ecosystems is well known, but there is limited understanding of the effects of long-term fertilization on soil microbial community succession in different farming management practices. Here, we report the responses of soil microbial community structure, abundance and activity to chemical (CF) and organic fertilization (OF) treatments in a sandy agricultural system of wheat-maize rotation over a 17-year period. Illumina MiSeq sequencing showed that the microbial community diversity and richness showed no significant changes in bacteria but decreased in fungi under both CF and OF treatments. The dominant species showing significant differences between fertilization regimes were Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria and Ascomycota at the phylum level, as well as some unclassified genera of other phyla at the genus level. As expected, soil organic matter content, nutrient element concentrations and bacterial abundance were enhanced by both types of fertilization, especially in OF, but fungal abundance was inhibited by OF. Redundancy analysis revealed that soil enzyme activities were closely related to both bacterial and fungal communities, and the soil nutrient, texture and pH value together determined the community structures. Bacterial abundance might be the primary driver of crop yield, and soil enzyme activities may reflect crop yield. Our results suggest a relatively permanent response of soil microbial communities to the long-term fertilization regimes in a reclaimed sandy agro-ecosystem from a mobile dune, and indicate that the appropriate dosage of chemical fertilizers is beneficial to sandy soil sustainability.