Biochar-mediated changes in soil quality and microbial community in a controlled trial

We investigated the behavior of biochar in arable soil in a greenhouse experiment in order to prove that these amendments can increase carbon storage in soils and find out the changes of microbial biomass and to identify microbial groups utilizing the biochars. We studied the effects of biochar combined treatments on 16S rRNA gene diversity to determine if biochar would consistently modify soil microbial activities. Although the overall diversity decreased upon biochar amendment, there were increase in the relative abundance to bacteria within the phyla Actinobacteria and Gemmatimonadetes in biochar-treated soils. Together, these results reveal a pronounced impact of pyrogenic carbon on soil microbial community composition and an enrichment of key taxa within the parent soil microbial community.