Plant diversity drives positive microbial associations in the rhizosphere enhancing carbon use efficiency in agricultural soils - fungal sequencing

Agricultural intensification has caused the loss of soil carbon. As agroecosystems occupy a large area of Earths land surface today, they must be part of the solution put in action to mitigate climate change. The utility of management practices to maximize soil carbon retention is currently limited by a poor understanding of how plants, which input carbon to soil, and microbes, which determine its fate there, interact with one-another. We implemented a diversity gradient by intercropping undersown species with barley in a large field trial, ranging from one to eight undersown species. We found that, increasing plant diversity, strengthens the positive associations within the rhizosphere soil microbial community in relation to the negative associations. These positive associations, in turn, enhanced microbial community carbon use efficiency. Jointly our results highlight how increasing plant diversity in agriculture can be used as a management strategy to enhance carbon retention potential in agricultural soils.