Soil microbiome dataset from the University of Wisconsin Arlington and Lancaster agricultural research stations and cheese maker and vegetable processor wastewater land application sites

Cheese making and vegetable processing are trillion-dollar industries globally. However, they generate immense volumes of high nitrogen wastewater that must be processed safely and cost effectively. Land application systems are frequently used by rural medium and smaller processing facilities that lack ready access to wastewater resource recovery facilities. This study utilized soil microbial data to determine system differences leading to high denitrification rates observed in incubation studies in agricultural soil collected from University of Wisconsin Agricultural Research Stations (ARS), Arlington and Lancaster stations, compared to industry cheese making and vegetable processing land application water treatment facilities. It was hypothesized that decade long frequent treatment with facility wastewater would alter the microbial communities in the system soils, but this is not the case. No clear correlations were found between soil denitrification rates and biotic or abiotic system..., Basal and glucose-induced soil respiration was measured as an indicator of general soil microbial activity and biomass, respectively. Respiration was measured by trapping carbon dioxide released in a 24-hour period incubation following rewetting of an air-dried sample, followed by another 24-hour period after glucose addition (Batterman et al., 2022). An ANOVA comparing soil sources (industry versus ARS) was conducted using JMP to evaluate statistical variability basal and induced respiration.
PLFA analysis was conducted by the University of Missouri Soil Health Assessment Center following Byron and Sasser (2012) using an Agilent 6890 gas chromatograph (GC) (Agilent Technologies, Wilmington, DE, USA) controlled with MIS Sherlock® (MIDI, Inc., Newark, DE, USA) and Agilent ChemStation software. Fatty acid methyl esters were identified using the MIDI PLFAD1 calibration mix and naming table. The PLFA data were analyzed for species richness, Shannon diversity, fungal to bacterial ratio, Gram..., , # **Arlington and Lancaster ARS, cheese maker and vegetable processor land application soil microbiome dataset**

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gqnk98sw1](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gqnk98sw1)

This dataset contains the raw data from soil 16S ribosomal RNA, phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) and soil microbial respiration analysis of samples collected from the University of Wisconsin Arlington and Lancaster Agricultural Research Stations, the Klondike (Cheese 1) and Maple Leaf (Cheese 2) cheese making ridge and furrow wastewater disposal fields, and the Seneca Cambria (Vegetable 1) and Del Monte Plover (Vegetable 2) vegetable processing wastewater disposal spray fields.

**Description of the data and file structure**

1.     File list:

a.     Wastewater_Soil_Respiration_Data.xlsx

b.     Wastewater_Land_application_study_PLFA_raw_data.xlsx

c.     Wastewater_Land_Application_study_soil_PLFA_summary_data.xlsx

d.     Wastewater_land_application_bacterial_data.xlsx

e.     Univ_of_Missou...