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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1467689
This article is part of the Research Topic Response and Adaptation of Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon, Nitrogen, and Water Cycles to Climate Change in Arid Desert Regions View all 5 articles

Fertilization effects on litter decomposition dynamics and nutrient release in orchard systems

Provisionally accepted
Nie Huayue Nie Huayue 1You Chunhe You Chunhe 2Jixi Gao Jixi Gao 2*
  • 1 Tongji University, Shanghai, China
  • 2 Center for Satellite Application on Ecology and Environment, Ministry of Ecology and Environment (China), Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Plant litter decomposition is a significant ecosystem function that regulates nutrient cycling, soil fertility, and biomass production. It is heavily regulated by nutrient intake. The effects of exogenous nutrients on litter decomposition are not yet fully understood. To determine how Eriobotrya japonica litter decomposition responds to adding nutrients, we used the decomposition litter bag method in the laboratory for 180 days.There were five different nutrient treatment levels used: control (no addition), low nitrogen addition (LN; 100 kg N•ha -1 • year -1 ), high nitrogen addition (HN; 200 kg N•ha -1 •year -1 ), phosphorous addition (P; 50 kg P•ha -1 • year -1 ), and micronutrients addition (M; 50 kg M•ha -1 •year -1 ).According to a repeated measures analysis of variance, adding N decreased the remaining mass (P < 0.01), reduced by 4.1% compared to the CK group.Whereas adding M increased the remaining mass (P < 0.01), increased by 6.8% compared to the CK group. Adding P had no significant effect on remaining mass. Although the amount of residual carbon (C) was unaffected, adding N increased the level of residual N in the litter. Litter C content, K content, N concentration, and C/N ratio were linearly correlated to litter remaining (P < 0.01). Although adding nutrients decreased soil enzyme activity later in the decomposition process, no significant correlation was detected between enzyme activity and the remaining. N fertilization treatments decreased the soil microbial diversity index. The addition of nitrogen and micronutrients reduced the abundance of Acidobacteria, while HN addition increased the abundance of Actinobacteria. The addition of micronutrients increased the abundance of Proteobacteria. These results imply that N-induced alterations in the element content of the litter regulated the effects of nutrient inputs on litter decomposition. This study can be a reference for the fertilization-induced decomposition of agricultural waste litter.

    Keywords: Litter decomposition, Nutrient additions, Element release, Nitrogen, phosphorous

    Received: 20 Jul 2024; Accepted: 12 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Huayue, Chunhe and Gao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jixi Gao, Center for Satellite Application on Ecology and Environment, Ministry of Ecology and Environment (China), Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.