A study to investigate the effects of long-term organic and integrated fertilization on soil microbial community

Microbes play key roles in diverse biogeochemical processes including nutrient cycling. However, responses of soil microbial community at the functional gene level to long-term fertilization, especially integrated fertilization (chemical combined with organic fertilization) remain unclear. Here we used microarray-based GeoChip techniques to explore the shifts of soil microbial functional community in a nutrient-poor paddy soil with long-term (21 years).The long-term fertilization experiment site (set up in 1990) was located in Taoyuan agro-ecosystem research station (28°55’N, 111°27’E), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hunan Province, China, with a double-cropped rice system. fertilization at various regimes. Soil samples from upper layer (0–15 cm) were taken from six fertilization treatments as follows: Control (no fertilizer), rice straw (R), rice straw plus chemical fertilizers nitrogen (NR), N and phosphorus (NPR), NP and potassium (NPKR), and reduced rice straw plus reduced NPK (L-NPKR). Each treatment has three replications. A total of eighteen samples were analyzed by Geochip.