Understory living grass mulch improves soil fertility, fruit yield and quality.

Background: Given the vulnerability of bare soils to degradation, living grass mulch is increasingly adopted to sustain soil health and improve fruit yield and quality.

Results: In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis based on 93 peer-reviewed publications to quantitatively assess the effects of living grass mulch on soil physicochemical properties, microbial communities, enzyme activities, and fruit productivity. Our results found that living grass mulch increased soil organic matter (+24.11%), total nitrogen (+15.93%), available nitrogen (+16.22%), total phosphorus (+10.09%), available phosphorus (+12.92%), total potassium (+11.96%), and moisture content (+14.02%). Furthermore, living grass mulch also increased bacteria and fungi abundance, as well as phosphatase and sucrase activities by 9.9%, 36.37%, 23.42%, and 28.59%, respectively. Managerial conditions influenced living grass mulch responses to soil nutrients change, as factors such as grass type, grass source, tree age, and duration of grass cover. Additionally, living grass mulch can improve fruit yield and quality, increased plant yield, average fruit weight and soluble sugar.

Conclusion: Our present findings demonstrate that understory grass cover enhances soil nutrients and microbial diversity, improving fruit yield and quality, and thus supports sustainable agriculture and the ecological development of smallholder plantations. © 2025 Society of Chemical Industry.