Duration of continuous cropping with straw return affects the composition and structure of soil bacterial communities in cotton fields.

Salinized land in the China's Xinjiang Region is being reclaimed for continuous cotton production. The specific objectives of this field study were (i) to compare bacterial composition and diversity in unfarmed (i.e.

Effects of reclamation years on composition and diversity of soil bacterial communities in Northwest China.

The objective of this study was to evaluate bacterial community structure and diversity in soil aggregate fractions when salinized farmland was reclaimed after >27 years of abandonment and then farmed again for 1, 5, 10, and 15 years. Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing was performed to characterize the soil bacterial communities in 5 aggregate size classes in each treatment. The results indicated that reclamation significantly increased macro-aggregation (>0.