Losses of glomalin-related soil protein under prolonged arable cropping: A chronosequence study in sandy soils of the South African Highveld

Residues of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may be important for agroecosystem functioning due to their ability to promote soil aggregation, especially in coarse textured soils with little biomass input and low capacity to conserve soil organic matter (SOM). Our aim was to assess the fate of AMF residues with prolonged arable cropping in coarse textured soils in a subtropical savannah assuming that glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP), especially the MAb32B11-immunoreactive fraction, mainly constitutes material of AMF origin. In three agroecosystems on the South African Highveld, surface soils were sampled. The former grassland soils had a history of up to 98 yr of cropping. We measured four GRSP fractions: Bradford-reactive soil protein (BRSP) and immunoreactive soil protein (IRSP), and easily extractable fractions of both. The primary grassland sites exhibited generally low contents of SOM and low GRSP contents. Prolonged arable land use of former grassland soils reduced the content of GRSP further. The decline could be described with a mono-exponential function with rate constants ranging from 0.04 to 0.41 yr−1. Depending on the GRSP fraction, steady-state conditions were reached after 11–92 yr on a level of 39–69% of the initial contents. We conclude that even though GRSP fractions had the same hypothesized origin, they comprised pools with different stability or replacement rate. Easily extractable IRSP was lost most rapidly. In contrast to carbon, nitrogen and microbial residue dynamics, GRSP contents were not reduced below a certain steady-state level, despite potentially negative management effects on AMF, such as tillage, inclusion of fallows into crop rotation and fertilization with inorganic phosphorus. The steady-state GRSP contents coincided with low, but steady agroecosystem yields under the given cropping management.