Unraveling the Impact of Long-Term Rice Monoculture Practice on Soil Fertility in a Rice-Planting Meadow Soil: A Perspective from Microbial Biomass and Carbon Metabolic Rate.

Global agricultural intensification leads to a decline in soil quality; however, the extent to which long-term rice cultivation adversely impacts soil, based on chemical and microbial perspectives, remains unclear. The present study was conducted on a seed multiplication farm in Wuchang, Heilongjiang Province, China, to quantify changes in the nutrient properties and microbial profiles of meadow soil in cultivated (rhizosphere and bulk soil) and uncultivated paddy plots from spring to winter. A non-parametric method was used to compare carbon metabolism characteristics among the three groups of soil samples.