Effects of land-use and management practices on soil ergosterol content in andosols

Abstract

Ergosterol is a fungus-specific chemical component which has been extensively used to assess the fungal biomass and activity in soils. In the present study, we investigated the soil ergosterol content in a group of Japanese soils differing in management. In addition, the relationships among the soil ergosterol content (SEC), microbial biomass C (MBC), and microbial biomass N (MBN) were also tested in different seasons. Our results showed that the SEC was lower in intensively cropped soils than in pasture and forest soils. In general, no consistent trend was observed for SEC of pasture soils within the same sampling period. However, SEC tended to decrease in most of the soils in autumn, which may be ascribed to the effect of seasonal changes on fungal biomass. No strong evidence could be obtained for the effect of different fertilizers on SEC, which can be due to different management variables and interspecific variations between fungal communities at different soil sites. Our results did not suggest the presence of a noticeable correlation between SEC and MBC or MBN. The ratio of SEC in total biomass C was lower (0.20 and 0.11% in spring and autumn, respectively) compared with the values reported.