Soil bacterial communities and diversity as affected by different tillage practices in maize production systems

Our understanding on the impacts of tillage treatments on the soil bacterial community structure and diversity in crop production systems are limited. This study evaluated the soil bacterial communities and diversity under different tillage systems in an effort to identify management practices that effectively support sustainable maize production. In this study, the effects of 2-year different tillage systems (rotary tillage and no-tillage) on the community structure and diversity of soil bacteria in maize production system were investigated in 2019 and 2020, respectively. The soil bacterial community structure was analyzed using Illumina MiSeq amplicon sequencing in this study. The number of observed amplicon servants and the Shannon diversity index of soil bacteria were not affected by difference in tillage system. However, the bacterial community structure evaluated by principal coordinate analysis was significantly different between rotary tillage and no-tillage system in each year. Thus, the tillage system strongly affected on the bacterial community structure in the soils.