Conventional versus organic cropping and peat amendment: Impacts on soil microbiota and their activities

We measured soil microbiota and enzyme activities in order to compare conventional (CCS: chemical fertilisers, plant rotation with cereals dominating) and organic (OCS: green and farmyard manure, plant rotation including leguminous plants) cropping systems in a long-term field experiment. During the 3-year study period, strawberry was grown on the whole area and peat amendment was applied to a set of plots. Activities of 12 different enzymes, phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) and microbial biomass (Cmic and Nmic) were measured twice each year. Dry weight (dw), water holding capacity (WHC) and pH were also measured. The enzyme activities were generally higher, arylsulphatase, phosphomonoesterase (PME) and esterase activities consistently, in the OCS than in the CCS. Other enzyme activities displayed higher activities either during 1 or 2 years or seasonally. Peat amendment increased PME, phosphodiesterase (PDE), leucine aminopeptidase (AP), chitinase, cellobiosidase, α-glucosidase and esterase activities but decreased arylsulphatase and initially alanine AP activities, whereas β-glucosidase and β-xylosidase activities were increased only during the 3rd year. Microbial biomass was higher in the OCS than in the CCS but peat addition decreased Cmic and Nmic at least initially. Both the OCS and peat addition increased soil PLFA content. Peat treatment also affected soil microbial structure as revealed by PLFA patterns, whereas the cropping system had no impact.