The impact of agricultural soil usage on activity and abundance of ammonifying bacteria in selected soils from Poland

SpringerPlus, May 2016

The aim of the study was to demonstrate the impact of soil agricultural usage on the abundance of ammonifying bacteria (AB) and their activity, expressed as arginine ammonification (AA). Five agriculturally exploited types of soils (FAO): Haplic Luvisol, Brunic Arenosol, Mollic Gleysol, Eutric Fluvisol, and Rendzina Leptosol were studied. The controls were non-agricultural soils of the same type located in close proximity to agricultural sites. The tested soils varied in terms of pH (4.18–7.08), total carbon (8.39–34.90 g kg−1), easily degradable carbon content (0.46–1.11 g kg−1), moisture (5.20–13.50 %), and nitrogen forms (mg kg−1): 1.68–27.17, 0.036–0.862, 0.012–3.389 for nitrate nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, and ammonia nitrogen, respectively. The AB abundance in agricultural soils ranged from 1.1 to 6.4 × 104 cfu g−1, while in the controls it was significantly higher—from 2.0 to 110 × 104 cfu g−1 of soil. Also, AA in the controls was three-times higher than in the agricultural soils. Strong associations between AA and the abundance of AB in the control (r = 0.954***) and agricultural soils (r = 0.833***) were proved. In the agricultural soils, the AB abundance and AA were influenced by pH (r = 0.746*** and r = 0.520***) and carbon content (r = 0.488*** and r = 0.391***). The AB abundance was also affected by easily degradable carbon (r = 0.517**) and nitrite nitrogen (r = 0.376*), whilst ammonium nitrogen influenced AA (r = 0.451*). Our results indicate that the abundance of AB and AA may be good indicators of soil biological conditions.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186%2Fs40064-016-2264-8.pdf

The impact of agricultural soil usage on activity and abundance of ammonifying bacteria in selected soils from Poland

Wolińska et al. SpringerPlus The impact of agricultural soil usage on activity and abundance of ammonifying bacteria in selected soils from Poland Agnieszka Wolińska 1 Anna Szafranek‑Nakonieczna 1 Artur Banach 1 Mieczysław Błaszczyk 0 Zofia Stępniewska 1 0 Department of Microbial Biology, Warsaw University of Life Sciences , 159 Nowoursynowska, Str., 02‐776 Warsaw , Poland 1 Department of Biochemistry and Environmental Chemistry, Institute of Biotechnology, The John Paul II Catholic Univer‐ sity of Lublin , Konstantynów 1 I Str., 20‐708 Lublin , Poland The aim of the study was to demonstrate the impact of soil agricultural usage on the abundance of ammonifying bacteria (AB) and their activity, expressed as arginine ammonification (AA). Five agriculturally exploited types of soils (FAO): Haplic Luvisol, Brunic Arenosol, Mollic Gleysol, Eutric Fluvisol, and Rendzina Leptosol were studied. The controls were non‑ agricultural soils of the same type located in close proximity to agricultural sites. The tested soils varied in terms of pH (4.18-7.08), total carbon (8.3934.90 g kg−1), easily degradable carbon content (0.46-1.11 g kg−1), moisture (5.2013.50 %), and nitrogen forms (mg kg−1): 1.68-27.17, 0.036-0.862, 0.012-3.389 for nitrate nitrogen, nitrite nitrogen, and ammonia nitrogen, respectively. The AB abundance in agricultural soils ranged from 1.1 to 6.4 × 104 cfu g−1, while in the controls it was significantly higher-from 2.0 to 110 × 104 cfu g−1 of soil. Also, AA in the controls was three‑ times higher than in the agricultural soils. Strong associations between AA and the abundance of AB in the control (r = 0.954***) and agricultural soils (r = 0.833***) were proved. In the agricultural soils, the AB abundance and AA were influenced by pH (r = 0.746*** and r = 0.520***) and carbon content (r = 0.488*** and r = 0.391***). The AB abundance was also affected by easily degradable carbon (r = 0.517**) and nitrite nitrogen (r = 0.376*), whilst ammonium nitrogen influenced AA (r = 0.451*). Our results indicate that the abundance of AB and AA may be good indicators of soil biological conditions. Arginine ammonification; Ammonifying bacteria; Agricultural soil usage; Nitrogen forms; pH Background Nitrogen transformation in agro-ecosystems is indispensable to sustain the future crop production (Bhuyan et al. 2014) . N-mineralization, a microbial process supplying mineral N to plants in terrestrial ecosystems (Doran 1987; Bach et  al. 2012; Wang et  al. 2013) , is influenced by biomass inputs, microbial activities, and different abiotic factors such as microclimatic variations and land use patterns (Bhuyan et  al. 2014). Land use change plays a very important role in regulating soil N mineralization and availability by altering soil biological, physical, and chemical properties (Marquard et  al. 2009; Campos 2010) . Thus, it is assumed that intensification of agricultural practices modifies the plant composition and soil characteristics that regulate the water content, nutrient availability (Rhoades and Coleman 1999), pH (Campos 2010) , and carbon content ( Wolińska et  al. 2014 ). The study perfor med by Mäder et  al. (2002 ) and Nourbakhsh and Alinejadian (2009) clearly indicated that intensive agriculture has increased crop yields but also posed severe environmental problems. A majority of them are associated with the high input of N fertilizers in intensive crop production (Deng and Tabatabai 2000; Marquard et  al. 2009) . As described by Nourbakhsh and Alinejadian (2009), N mineralization is a process of conversion of organic forms of N to ammonium (NH4+), which can be easily taken up by plants and thus play a vital role in plant growth (Doran 1987; Wang et al. 2013) . Our paper considers arginine ammonification activity as a biological function participating in the mineralization of organic N. Earlier reports also suggested that soil microorganisms catabolize arginine via different pathways, and NH4+ is a predominant end product (Nourbakhsh and Alinejadian 2009) . Additionally, AA can be considered as an estimation of soil microbial-population size and their general activity (Alef and Kleiner 1987; Bonde et al. 2001; Nourbakhsh and Alinejadian 2009) , and thus it is a convenient, inexpensive, sensitive, and relatively fast method recommended for estimation of microbial potential activity (Alef and Kleiner 1987; Kresović and Liĉina 2002) . It is known that each soil type has its own microflora that is affected positively or negatively by the pattern of soil usage, which is directly reflected in soil fertility (Tintor et al. 2009; Marinkovic et al. 2012; Kheyrodin et al. 2012) . Among the huge diversity of microorganisms in the soil environment, chemolitho-autotrophic AB from the β subclass of Proteobacteria (Kowalchuk and Stephen 2001; Qiu et al. 2010) are ubiquitous and found in nearly all soil, freshwater, and marine environments (Horz et al. 2004; Qiu et al. 2010) . Moreo (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186%2Fs40064-016-2264-8.pdf

Agnieszka Wolińska, Anna Szafranek-Nakonieczna, Artur Banach, Mieczysław Błaszczyk, Zofia Stępniewska. The impact of agricultural soil usage on activity and abundance of ammonifying bacteria in selected soils from Poland, SpringerPlus, 2016, pp. 565, Volume 5, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1186/s40064-016-2264-8