Abstract
The regulatory gate hypothesis considers that soil organic C mineralization is a two-step process, where stable C is firstly transformed abiotically and is only then a microbially available substrate. The mechanisms involved in the abiotic conversion of non-microbially available to available soil organic C remain largely unknown. We conducted a perfusion experiment using a repeated fumigated-incubated soil and the corresponding fresh soil. We found that repeated fumigation-incubation significantly decreased soil microbial ATP to 0.22 nmol g−1 soil, 10% of that in the fresh soil, and significantly destroyed microbial composition and diversity. However, it had little influence on the soil CO2-C evolution rate after the flush of fumigant-killed dead biomass (8 μg CO2-C g−1 soil day−1) or dissolved organic C (DOC) concentration (about 7 μg C g−1 soil) and composition during long-term perfusion. We conclude that soil CO2 evolution rate and DOC generation were not regulated by the size or composition of the soil microbial communities. This is in support of the regulatory gate hypothesis. We suggest that abiotic processes in soil organic C mineralization need to be considered more and studied further.
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04 March 2020
The original version of this article was published with open access. With the author(s)’ decision to step back from Open Choice, the copyright of the article changed on 04 March 2020 to © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of copyright.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Msc Yanfeng Chen, Professor David Powlson, Rothamsted Research, for helpful discussion.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41671233, 41721001, 41807017, 41671237). P. C. Brookes received funding under The Chinese Government 1000 Talents Program.
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The original version of this article was revised: The original version of this article was published with open access. With the author(s)’ decision to step back from Open Choice, the copyright of the article changed on 04 March 2020 to © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of copyright.
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Zhou, X., Chen, L., Xu, J. et al. Soil biochemical properties and bacteria community in a repeatedly fumigated-incubated soil. Biol Fertil Soils 56, 619–631 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01437-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-020-01437-0