Absence of a home-field advantage within a short rotation arable cropping system

We tested the HFA hypothesis in a reciprocal transplant experiment with mesh bags containing wheat and oilseed rape (OSR) residues in soils at three stages of a short-rotation (wheat, wheat, wheat, OSR) arable cropping system. Subsets of mesh bags were dug up every month for six months throughout the growing season to determine residue decomposition rates. Soils were sampled concomitantly for measurement of soil available N (KCl extraction), microbial biomass C (fumigation-extraction) and microbial community structure (phospholipid fatty acid analysis), to assess how plants influence litter decomposition rates via alterations to soil biochemical properties.

Soil type: luvisol
Soil texture: sandy-silty loam

More details will be added in later versions of this dataset.