Microbial biomass carbon dynamics in a long-term tillage and crop rotation experiment under semiarid Mediterranean conditions

Microbial biomass carbon (MBC) of soil is an important ecological indicator of nutrient cycling and soil fertility. In addition, it responds to the changes of soil fertility more rapidly than soil organic matter. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the effect of a long-term implementation of a conservative soil management strategy (No Tillage [NT]) compared to the inversion tillage (conventional tillage [CT]) on the soil MBC in a range of crops - continuous durum wheat (WW), wheat after fababean (FW) and faba bean after wheat (WF). MBC of NT plots was higher than CT. In addition, the content of MBC varied with sampling time during the growing season; this variation did not show a consistent pattern with tillage techniques or the crop species. Further research is needed to elucidate the effects of tillage and crop on the MBC dynamics within the soil profile in the semi-arid Mediterranean environment.