The influence of stress treatments on the microbial biomass and the rate of decomposition of humified matter in soils containing different amoutns of clay

Summary ¹⁴C-labelled substrates (glucose, hemicellulose, cellulose, maize straw, and barley straw) were incubated in 4 soils with clay contents of, 6, 12, 16 and 34%. After 2 years an average of 20% of the labelled C remained in the soils; 10% of this residual C was in biomass as determined by fumigation with CHCl₃.Air-drying, C addition (unlabelled glucose), heating (80°C), and grinding of the soils accelerated the evolution of labelled CO₂. Grinding and heating had the largest effect, increasing CO₂ evolution during the first 10 days by a factor of 15 to 22 relative to untreated soil. Air-drying had the least effect; it increased the CO₂ evolution 7 to 9 times. The accelerating effect was still measurable, during the third month of incubation when the CO₂ evolution was 1.2 to 1.9 times that from untreated soil.The treatments also affected the labelled biomass; air-drying had the least effect, and grinding the most. Three months after these two treatments the biomass was 3/4 and 1/4, respectively, of the amount at the start.On the average the treatments in all four soils had the greatest affect on humified material originating from glucose, hemicellulose, and cellulose; the least effect was on material originating from straw.The addition of unlabelled glucose accelerated the evolution of labelled CO₂–C in all four soils. The size of the effect on CO₂ evolution and on the biomass was similar to that of air-drying.Grinding killed a larger percentage of the biomass in the sandy soil than in the soils with a high content of clay. The effect of the other treatments was largely the same in all four soils.The effect of the treatments towards the native biomass and humic matter was largely parallel to that on the labelled biomass.The observations are consistent with the view that the biomass as determined by fumigation with CHCl₃ mainly consists of dormant organisms. CO₂ production — the biological activity — was related to the amount of available organic material and not the size of the biomass.