Characteristics of soil nitrogen and nitrogen cycling microbial communities in different alfalfa planting years

ABSTRACT Nitrogen cycling in soil and its microbial community characteristics are closely related. Characteristics of soil nitrogen, community diversity of nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NFB) and ammonia oxidizers were study with a traditional farmland as control and five treatment alfalfa fields of 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-year (a) cultivation. The results showed that total nitrogen (TN) significantly increased in 3, 4 and 5 a, alkali-hydrolysable nitrogen (AHN), NH4 +-N (AN), NO3 −-N (NN) and SOC was the highest in 3, 5, 3, 4 a, respectively. The dominant phylum of NFB and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) belonged to Proteobacteria with a higher diversity and abundance in 3 and 4 a. Crenarchaeota was found the dominant phylum of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) with the highest abundance in the alfalfa field planted for 2 a. The dominant genus of NFB and AOB were Azohydromonas and Nitrosospira, respectively, which showed the highest abundance in the alfalfa fields planted for 2 and 3 a, respectively. The diversity of NFB and AOB showed a significantly positive correlation with TN and AHN (p < 0.05). AOA showed a significantly negative correlation with AN (p < 0.05). Many microbial species cannot be annotated in this study, which deserves future investigation.