Long-term impact of tillage on microbial communities of an Eastern European Chernozem.

As conservation agricultural practices continue to spread, there is a need to understand how reduced tillage impacts soil microbes. Effects of no till (NT) and disk till (DT) relative to moldboard plow (MP) were investigated in a long-term experiment established on Chernozem. Results showed that conservation practices, especially NT, increased total, active and microbial biomass carbon.