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Soil biodiversity supports agroecosystem services under multiple global change factors
Summary
Scientists tested how well soil life (like microbes and worms) helps wheat crops stay healthy and productive when faced with multiple stresses at once, things like drought, heat, pollution, salt, and even microplastics. They found that having diverse, healthy soil biology helped crops cope better even under these combined stresses, though there were trade-offs: crops might grow more short-term but lose out on other benefits like nutrient recycling. The takeaway is that protecting soil biodiversity isn't just good for the environment, it's key to keeping our food supply stable as climate change and pollution intensify.
Cereals are the key staple foods supporting a growing population under global change. Soil biodiversity sustains ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) that underpin food production and soil agroecosystem services. Yet, the capacity of soil biodiversity to support EMF in cereal fields under multiple global change factors (GCFs) remains virtually unknown. Here, we conducted a field mesocosm experiment involving wheat, four levels of soil biodiversity, and up to eight distinct GCFs (warming, drought, salinity, heavy metals, nitrogen addition, microplastics, pesticides, and alkalinization) to investigate the contributions of soil biodiversity in supporting EMF (e.g., crop productivity, nutrient cycling, plant symbionts, plant health and organic matter decomposition) under multiple GCFs. Our results reveal that soil biodiversity maintains positive effects on EMF under increasing levels of GCFs. Intermediate levels of multiple GCFs stimulated vegetative wheat biomass, likely due to compensatory responses, but often at the expense of other soil ecosystem functions such as organic matter decomposition or the prevalence of plant symbionts, highlighting the inherent trade-offs under global change. These findings demonstrate that preserving soil biodiversity is essential to maintain agroecosystem functioning under multiple global change factors.