ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Agron.
Sec. Plant-Soil Interactions
Effects of Expanded Straw versus Conventional Straw Returning on Soil Microbial Communities and Rice Yield
Provisionally accepted
- 1Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University, Daqing, China
- 2Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin, China
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Puffed straw is a new form of straw returning that is used to pretreat rice straw using steam explosion technology to change the fiber of straw. The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare the effects of two straw returning forms, conventional straw (A), puffed straw (B), and non-returning straw treatment (CK), on soil microbial community structure and rice yield, and study the relationship between microbes and yield components. Continuous straw return tests were conducted from 2020 to 2021. Compared with the CK treatment, the organic matter content, available potassium content, and alkali-hydrolyzed nitrogen content of Treatments A and B all increased. The available phosphorus in B was significantly reduced by 11.96%. Importantly, the OTUs, ACE, and Chao indices of fungi in treatments A and B increased by 22.31%, 21.82%, 22.83%, and 37.82%, 38.52%, 46.62%, respectively. Furthermore, compared to CK, the yields of A and B increased significantly by 20.42% and 22.51%, respectively. It was found that straw returning increased the soil nutrients, microbial diversity, and rice yield.This experiment provides a theoretical basis for returning rice straw to the field.
Keywords: continuous returning3, form of straw returning2, Microbial community4, puffed straw1, yield5
Received: 24 Sep 2025; Accepted: 19 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Cui, Liu, Fang, Liu, Li and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lihua Liu
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