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Updated: Aug 29, 2025

Isolation and Analysis of Microbial Communities in Soil, Rhizosphere, and Roots in Perennial Grass Experiments
Published on: July 24, 2018
Nitrogen deposition experiment mimicked with NH4NO3 overestimates the effect on soil microbial community composition
Tingting Li1, Zijia Zhang1,2, Yiping Ma1,2,3
1Key Laboratory of Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China.
Background:
The nitrogenous compound deposited from the atmosphere to the soil is complex, but most field experiments mimic nitrogen deposition with the acid NH4NO3 alone. Thus, whether the acid and non-acid nitrogenous compounds have similar effects on biodiversity and ecosystem functions remains understudied. We mimicked nitrogen deposition with acidic NH4NO3 and (NH4)2SO4, and non-acidic urea, slow-released urea and NH4HCO3 in a temperate steppe, and quantified soil microbial taxonomic and functional gene composition with amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics, respectively.
Results:
While NH4NO3 and (NH4)2SO4 significantly altered the soil microbial taxonomic and functional composition as well as their carbon decomposition potential, the other three compounds had smaller effects.
Conclusion:
Our results suggested that previous nitrogen deposition experiments mimicked with NH4NO3 or (NH4)2SO4 alone may have overestimated the effect on biodiversity and ecosystem functions in the Eurasian steppe and similar ecosystems affected by mainly nonacidic nitrogen deposition.
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