Conservation agriculture buffers persistent carbon loss under warming by microbial adaptation
Abstract
Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) governs soil carbon persistence under warming, with its magnitude highly dependent on how microbial metabolism adapts to varying substrates. How agricultural management mediates this response in agroecosystems remains poorly understood. To address this, we coupled 18O-H2O tracing of community-level CUE with 13C-probing of substrate utilization efficiency (SUE) from substrates differing in apparent bioavailability after 11 years of experimental warming under conventional and conservation agriculture, using glucose as a readily available carbohydrate and vanillin as a less accessible lignin-derived aromatic substrate. Warming stimulated glucose SUE under both management regimes, whereas vanillin SUE declined by 20% exclusively under conservation agriculture. This shift in relative anabolic efficiency (RAE, SUEglucose/SUEvanillin) was associated with warming-induced changes in CUE, primarily through changes in vanillin rather than glucose SUE. Concurrently, conservation agriculture improved substrate quality under warming, reflected by a reduced litter lignocellulose index. In response, microbial communities exhibited distinct functional adaptations, shifting toward copiotrophic taxa with higher rRNA operon copy numbers and a 16% increase in the anabolic-to-catabolic gene ratio, indicating enhanced microbial growth potential and greater investment for labile-carbon processing. Structural equation modeling further showed that shifts in substrate quality were a primary driver of RAE, mediated by changes in microbial life-history strategies under conservation agriculture. Together, these results provide a genome-resolved mechanistic framework showing that conservation agriculture enhances soil carbon persistence under warming by reshaping microbial relative anabolic efficiency and metabolic strategies, highlighting metabolic adaptation as a key mechanism regulating soil carbon stability in warming agroecosystems.
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BibTeX
@article{ling2026conservation,
title = {{Conservation agriculture buffers persistent carbon loss under warming by microbial adaptation}},
author = {Jun Ling and Wolfgang Wanek and Kyle Mason-Jones and Jennifer Dungait and Luiz Domeignoz-Horta and Ruixing Hou and Yakov Kuzyakov and Fusuo Zhang and Jing Tian},
journal = {The International Society of Microbiologial Ecology Journal},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.1093/ismejo/wrag224},
url = {https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05825871v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Conservation agriculture buffers persistent carbon loss under warming by microbial adaptation
AU - Jun Ling
AU - Wolfgang Wanek
AU - Kyle Mason-Jones
AU - Jennifer Dungait
AU - Luiz Domeignoz-Horta
AU - Ruixing Hou
AU - Yakov Kuzyakov
AU - Fusuo Zhang
AU - Jing Tian
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/30
JO - The International Society of Microbiologial Ecology Journal
DO - 10.1093/ismejo/wrag224
UR - https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05825871v1
AB - Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) governs soil carbon persistence under warming, with its magnitude highly dependent on how microbial metabolism adapts to varying substrates. How agricultural management mediates this response in agroecosystems remains poorly understood. To address this, we coupled 18O-H2O tracing of community-level CUE with 13C-probing of substrate utilization efficiency (SUE) from substrates differing in apparent bioavailability after 11 years of experimental warming under conventional and conservation agriculture, using glucose as a readily available carbohydrate and vanillin as a less accessible lignin-derived aromatic substrate. Warming stimulated glucose SUE under both management regimes, whereas vanillin SUE declined by 20% exclusively under conservation agriculture. This shift in relative anabolic efficiency (RAE, SUEglucose/SUEvanillin) was associated with warming-induced changes in CUE, primarily through changes in vanillin rather than glucose SUE. Concurrently, conservation agriculture improved substrate quality under warming, reflected by a reduced litter lignocellulose index. In response, microbial communities exhibited distinct functional adaptations, shifting toward copiotrophic taxa with higher rRNA operon copy numbers and a 16% increase in the anabolic-to-catabolic gene ratio, indicating enhanced microbial growth potential and greater investment for labile-carbon processing. Structural equation modeling further showed that shifts in substrate quality were a primary driver of RAE, mediated by changes in microbial life-history strategies under conservation agriculture. Together, these results provide a genome-resolved mechanistic framework showing that conservation agriculture enhances soil carbon persistence under warming by reshaping microbial relative anabolic efficiency and metabolic strategies, highlighting metabolic adaptation as a key mechanism regulating soil carbon stability in warming agroecosystems.
SN - 1751-7362
SN - 1751-7370
ER -