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Fate and dynamics of recently fixed C in pasture plant–soil system under field conditions

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Abstract

The flow of photosynthetically fixed C from plants to selected soil C pools was studied after 13CO2 pulse labeling of pasture plants under field conditions, dynamics of root-derived C in soil was assessed and turnover times of the soil C pools were estimated. The transport of the fixed C from shoots to the roots and into the soil was very fast. During 27 h, net C belowground allocation reached more than 10% of the fixed C and most of the C was already found in soil. Soil microbial biomass (CMIC) was the major sink of the fixed C within soil C pools (ca 40–70% of soil 13C depending on sampling time). Significant amounts of 13C were also found in other labile soil C pools connected with microbial activity, in soluble organic C and C associated with microbial biomass (hot-water extract from the soil residue after chloroform fumigation-extraction) and the 13C dynamics of all these pools followed that of the shoots. When the labelling (2 h) finished, the fixed 13C was exponentially lost from the plant–soil system. The loss had two phases; the first rapid phase corresponded to the immediate respiration of 13C during the first 24 h and the second slower loss was attributable to the turnover of 13C assimilated in CMIC. The corresponding turnover times for CMIC were 1.1 days and 3.4 days respectively. Such short turnover times are comparable to those measured by growth kinetics after the substrate amendment in other studies, which indicates that microbial growth in the rhizosphere is probably not limited by substrate availability. Our results further confirmed the main role of the soil microbial community in the transformation of recently fixed C, short turnover time of the easily degradable C in the rhizosphere, and its negligible contribution to more stable soil C storage.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support was provided by the Grant Agency of the AS CR (KJB 01410610) and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MSM6007665801). We are grateful for the laboratory assistance of Tomáš Picek, Martina Vašková, Jiří Kaňa, and Jan Kaštovský, and language corrections of Keith Edwards.

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  1. Department of Ecosystem Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Eva Kaštovská & Hana Šantrůčková

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  1. Eva Kaštovská
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  2. Hana Šantrůčková
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Correspondence to Eva Kaštovská.

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Responsible Editor: David E. Crowley.

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Kaštovská, E., Šantrůčková, H. Fate and dynamics of recently fixed C in pasture plant–soil system under field conditions. Plant Soil 300, 61–69 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-007-9388-0

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