Vital soil for sustainable agriculture Soil biodiversity and functioning in the transition from conventional to organic

Summary

Soil biodiversity is essential driving soil functioning and thereby plays a key role in the transition to more sustainable agriculture. We studied how soil communities in terms of bacteria, fungi, nematodes and protists and soil multifunctionality changed in >70 agricultural fields in the Netherlands during the conversion from conventional to organic management using a chronosequence approach. We also investigated whether shifts in soil functionality were accelerated by soil inoculation. We found that organic agriculture enhanced diversity and changed community composition, especially of fungi and protists. We could not untangle how shifts in soil communities were determined by duration of organic management, because an unknown variable co-varied with time since conversion. In both conventional and organic arable farm soils, multifunctionality increased when management intensity was reduced. Soil inoculation did not affect soil functionality. Our findings show that shifts to organic or more extensive management may improve soil biodiversity and functioning.