The Influence of Different Cultivation Technologies on Bacterial Communities in the Soil under a Horse Bean Plantation

Modern agriculture must reverse its degrading influence on soils, the natural environment, and the climate. No-till soil cultivation technologies, which have been used for many years and are constantly being improved, are an example of such activities. Our research assumes that soil samples taken from a faba bean plantation in the twentieth year of the static field experiment will show differences in the composition of bacterial communities at the level of phylum, orders, classes, and species. The differences would be manifested by the environmental and agricultural functionality of the microorganisms in the soil cultivation system-dependent manner and they would indicate the bacterial species with environment-friendly properties. As a result, five variants of the soil samples were distinguished: 1 – plantless, fallow buffer zone of the field experiment – sample ‘0’, 2 – conventional tillage (ploughing), 3 – reduced tillage (stubble cultivator), 4 – strip tillage,5 – no tillage (direct drilling into stubble). Our study showed that the no-till cultivation technologies, mainly the strip till and no-till methods, applied at the horse bean plantation had a positive influence on microbial communities. The number of OTUs of species such as Gemmatimonas aurantiaca and Aeromicrobium ponti increased. The abundance of these species determines soil fertility and yield of crops. They are also environment and climate friendly, and therefore very important for sustainable or even regenerative agriculture. Further investigations of soil samples collected from another plantation of crops in different tillage systems may indicate functional species of microorganisms which are important for climate change and for the fertility of the soil.