Pulse Brain · Growing Health Evidence Index
Peer-reviewed

Increasing pesticide diversity impairs soil microbial functions

Bang Ni, Lu Xiao, Da Lin, Tian-Lun Zhang, Qi Zhang, Yanjie Liu, Quan Chen, Dong Zhu, Haifeng Qian, Matthias C. Rillig, Yong‐Guan Zhu

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025

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Summary

Pesticide application is essential for stabilizing agricultural production. However, the effects of increasing pesticide diversity on soil microbial functions remain unclear, particularly under varying nitrogen (N) fertilizer management practices. In this study, we investigated the stochasticity of soil microbes and multitrophic networks through amplicon sequencing, assessed soil community functions related to carbon (C), N, phosphorus (P), and sulfur (S) cycling, and characterized the dominant bacterial life history strategies via metagenomics along a gradient of increasing pesticide diversity under two N addition levels. Our findings show that higher pesticide diversity enriches the abundance of bacterial specialists and opportunists capable of degrading or resisting pesticides, reducing

Source type
Peer-reviewed study
DOI
10.1073/pnas.2419917122
Catalogue ID
SNmoh394kt-0d6kwv
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