The influence of storage time on soil microbiological attributes and their effectiveness in monitoring soil quality in coffee culture

Abstract

Ensuring the quality of agricultural soils is essential for the sustainable production of food. A high-quality soil has satisfactory microbiological attribute values. These attributes are early and effective predictors of soil changes. But their values as an indicator can be influenced by the methodology used and the soil class evaluated. The objective of this thesis was to analyze the effect of storage time and different soil classes on the main microbiological attributes used as indicators of soil quality and the potential of these attributes as indicators of the quality of different soils under coffee crops. Seven attributes were evaluated (microbial biomass carbon, basal microbial respiration, fluorescein diacetate hydrolysis - FDA, and the activity of the enzymes urease, β-glucosidase, arylsulfatase, and acid phosphatase) in five different storage times (15 hours and 15 hours, 30, 60 and 120 days). The soil samples came from four different environments (Oxisol under forest, Oxisol under coffee, Planosol under forest, and Planosol under coffee). Depending on the storage time, all attributes were able to differentiate the environments. Long storage times compromise the use of most attributes as indicators of soil quality. Therefore, they should be considered when these attributes are used as indicators of soil quality. Different soil classes under conditions that allow organic matter to accumulate may have values comparable to microbial biomass carbon, microbial basal respiration, urease, and qCO2. The carbon of the microbial biomass, FDA, urease, β-glucosidase, and acid phosphatase exhibited greater capacity to discriminate areas showing that these attributes are good indicators of the quality of soils cultivated with coffee.