Establishment of perennial grassland combined with rotational grazing in dryland ecosystems can help improve soil microfood web complexity and soil multifunctionality

Intensive crop production on grassland-derived dryland agro-ecosystems have caused significant damage to soil biodiversity and multifunctionality. Whether diversifying crop-forage rotations, or re-establishing perennial grasslands and integrating livestock can slow or reverse this trend remains highly uncertain. We studied how these management practices affected soil multifunctionality in a 14-y-old field experiment in the northern China and assessed how soil micro-food webs traits were related to multifunctionality. Compared to conventional continuous maize monocropping with annual tillage, systems with reduced tillage or diversified crop rotations did not increase soil soil microfood webs diversity, whereas perennial pastures managed with rotational grazing increased microfood web diversity, network structure complex and multifunctionality than all annual cropping systems after 14 y of management. In addition, we found that the diversity, composition, and network structure of soil microfood webs are closely related to soil multifunctionality, and the degree of explanation of soil microfood webs for soil multifunctionality decreases after reducing the trophic level. In conclusion, our study provides an ecologically beneficial land use type for dryland agro-ecosystems and suggests that more trophic levels of soil microfood webs should be considered when investigating the soil biodiversity-multifunctionality relationship. which reinforces the suggestion that attention should be paid to multi-trophic level studies when exploring the relationship between soil microfood webs and soil multifunctionality.