Cover crops influence soil microorganisms and phytoextraction of copper from a moderately contaminated vineyard

We investigated the ability of summer (Avena sativa [oat], Trifolium incarnatum [crimson clover], Chenopodium [goosefoot]) and winter (Vicia villosa [hairy vetch], Secale Cereale L. [Rye], Brassica napus L. partim [rape]) cover crops, including a mixed species treatment, to extract copper from an organic vineyard soil in situ and the microbial communities that may support it. Clover had the highest copper content (14.3 mg Cu kg− 1 DM). However, it was the amount of total biomass production that determined which species was most effective at overall copper removal per hectare. The winter crop rye produced significantly higher amounts of biomass (3532 kg DM ha− 1) and, therefore, removed significantly higher amounts of copper (14,920 mg Cu ha− 1), despite less accumulation of copper in plant shoots. The maximum annual removal rate, a summation of best performing summer and winter crops, would be 0.033 kg Cu ha− 1 y− 1. Due to this low annual extraction efficiency, which is less than the 6 kg Cu ha− 1 y− 1 permitted for application, phytoextraction cannot be recommended as a general method of copper extraction from vineyards. Copper concentration did not influence aboveground or belowground properties, as indicated by sampling at two distances from the grapevine row with different soil copper concentrations. Soil microorganisms may have become tolerant to the copper levels at this site. Microbial biomass and soil enzyme activities (arylsulfatase and phosphatase) were instead driven by seasonal fluxes of resource pools. Gram + bacteria were associated with high soil moisture, while fungi seemed to be driven by extractable carbon, which was linked to high plant biomass. There was no microbial group associated with the increased phytoextraction of copper. Moreover, treatment did not influence the abundance, activity or community structure of soil microorganisms.