Air-drying and long time preservation of soil do not significantly impact microbial community composition and structure

Abstract

Abstract To determine whether archived air-dried soils can be potentially used to explore microbial information upon sampling, we examined microbial community dynamics during soil air-drying and long time preserving. Fresh soils from five long-term fertilization treatments were sampled, air-dried, and preserved. Soil microbial community was characterized at specific intervals (from 0\xa0h to 8192\xa0h) by Illumina sequencing. The results showed that both prokaryotic and fungal community profiles did not substantially change during air-drying and long time preserving. The fertilization effects on microbial community structure could still be identified using the air-dried soils. These findings suggest that air-drying and preserving exerts an almost negligible impact on soil microbial community profiles, laying the foundation for utilizing worldwide archived soils to investigate microbial community.