Soil microbiota of organic and conventional management

The effect of conventional and organic management in agriculture impacts not only economic and food quality aspects but potentially all biological components of the environment where these activities are operated, including soil microorganisms. While there is a generally positive appreciation of organic agriculture for organic matter accumulation, its beneficial effects on soil microbiota are a matter of debate, mostly due to the different conditions in which the comparisons are carried out.Soils were sampled from nearby fields managed separately with the same rotation schemes for 18 years with conventional low-impact and organic agriculture. Samples, taken from six different cultures and three different time-points (March, June and September 2019), have been compared by means of metabarcoding 16s fingerprinting. While other papers found very little differences between microbiota of otherwise managed soils after shorter time periods, this work underlines that almost two decades of separate management are necessary to induce significant variations of the microbiota, suggesting a strong resilience of the soil populations and the need for very long-term strategies in agriculture for effective changes in the soil quality.