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Journal of Tea Science ›› 2025, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (2): 234-252.

• Research Paper • Previous Articles     Next Articles

The Impacts and Regulatory Mechanisms of Forest Conversion to Tea Plantations and Their Management on Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Pools

HUANG Fuyin1,2, ZHANG Shaobo2, HU Qiang2, LUO Ying2, DONG Yajie4, ZHANG Jie2, LI Xin2, FU Jianyu2, WANG Huasen1,3,*, YAN Peng2,*   

  1. 1. College of Horticulture Science, Zhejiang A & F University, Hangzhou 311300, China;
    2. Tea Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310008, China;
    3. School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Zhejiang A & F University, Hangzhou 311300, China;
    4. Pu'er University, Pu'er 665000, China
  • Received:2025-01-15 Revised:2025-03-10 Online:2025-04-15 Published:2025-04-30

Abstract: This study investigated how the conversion of forests to tea plantations and associated management practices affect the dynamics of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) fractions across soil profiles in tea agroecosystems, with a focus on fungal community-mediated regulatory mechanisms. We compared forest soils with tea plantation soils under low-, medium-, and high-intensity fertilization regimes. Soil cores were systematically collected from four depth intervals (0-10 cm, 10-20 cm, 20-40 cm, and 40-60 cm) to analyze vertical stratification of C/N fractions, nutrient stoichiometry, and fungal community composition. The results reveal that tea plantations management significantly enhanced soil organic carbon and total nitrogen contents in the 0-10 cm soil layer compared to forest soil. Under high-input conditions, total carbon and nitrogen reached 46.57 g·kg-1 and 5.13 g·kg-1, respectively, increasing by 68.12% and 88.60% compared to low-input tea plantations. Land-use conversion and fertilization intensity gradients in tea plantations significantly modified fungal community structure and composition, with these changes being mainly driven by soil nutrient availability, including available phosphorus (AP), available potassium (AK), and total nitrogen (TN). In addition, fungal richness demonstrates a progressive decline across soil depth gradients (0-60 cm). Further analyses reveals that Dothideomycetes and Umbelopsidiomycetes exhibited significant positive correlations with soil C and N fractions, whereas Mortierellomycetes, Geminibasidiomycetes and Mucoromycotina_cls_Incertae_sedis showed pronounced negative correlations. Variations in the relative abundance of these taxa may strongly influence carbon and nitrogen cycling in tea plantation soils. Therefore, the conversion of forests to tea plantations and different fertilization management practices regulate soil carbon and nitrogen accumulation by influencing the structure of soil fungal communities and the abundance of dominant taxa.

Key words: land use, carbon pool, nitrogen pool, tea plantation, fertilizer management, fungi microbial community

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