Effect of Fertilizer on Bacterial Diversity and Mineral Properties Under Different Soil Tillage Practices

This study examined the effect of fertilizer amendment type and tillage practice on the chemical properties and the bacterial community’s assessment as biological indicators of the soil fertility, with conserving this biological system of agro-ecosystem production. The experiment compared conventional tillage (CT) with three (3) minimum tillage (MT) methods. Metagenomic analysis was executed out to determine the phyla of the bacteria. The impacts of the treatments were primarily observed in phosphorus (P) dynamics, while other mineral elements remained relatively stable due to differences in nutrient availability mechanisms. The results showed similarities between different treatments, particularly between minimum tillage (MT) with the same mineral (M) input as well as between organic (O) inputs, while CT with mineral input appeared to be the most distinctive treatment. Tillage has a small but statistically have significantly structural impact on the configuration of microbial communities (P-Value <0.05), for major bacteria’s’ phyla. In this analysis, the Shannon index varied between 5.48 and 5.23, indicating a particularly diverse bacterial community, characteristic of agricultural soils with significant biological activity. The bacteria of the phyla Planctomycetota and Verrucomicrobia are correlated positively with the Actinobacteriota phyla, and we consider beneficial bacteria and consider them all as biological indicators of agricultural soil bio-fertility. The results demonstrated that tillage seems to have a bigger impact on bacterial diversity than fertilization. Reduced tillage using a combination of two implements (cover crop incorporation and tine cultivator) is suggested as the most suitable option for this type of soil.