ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Terrestrial Microbiology
This article is part of the Research TopicSoil Microbiome and Agroecosystem MultifunctionalityView all 14 articles
Synergistic Nano–Bioorganic Amendments Enhance Soil Properties and Microbial Structure in Coastal Saline Soils
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yellow River Water Conservancy Vocational and Technical College, Kaifeng, China
- 2Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Nanjing, China
- 3Hebei Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences Coastal Agriculture Institute, Tangshan, China
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Soil salinization poses a significant constraint on arable land availability. Soil microorganisms play essential roles in maintaining soil fertility and ecosystem functioning, however, current remediation strategies frequently overlook microbial community responses to exogenous nutrient inputs in saline soils. Hence, we established a field experiment on coastal saline soil employing four treatments: bio-organic fertilizer (OF), nano-carbon (NC), bio-organic fertilizer combined with nano-carbon (FC), and an untreated control (CK). 16S rRNA and ITS Illumina sequencing were used to investigate changes in microbial populations and functional profiles. Results demonstrated that organic amendments significantly improved soil porosity, soil water content,nutrient availability, and enzyme activity while reducing bulk density, pH, sodium adsorption ratio, and salt concentration. Microbial diversity was markedly enhanced under organic amendment treatments. The FC treatment significantly increased the relative abundance of Chytridiomycota, Firmicutes, and Desulfurobacteria at the phylum level; Fungal communities were dominated by Ascomycota, whereas Proteobacteria and Desulfobacterota served as key bacterial biomarkers. Redundancy Analysis (RDA) identified soil salinity (EC) and pH as the dominant factors, jointly explaining a larger proportion of variance in bacterial communities (RDA1, 34.96%) compared to fungal communities. Mantel tests confirmed statistically significant correlations between microbial community dissimilarity and soil property matrices. A key finding was the divergent response patterns between kingdoms: bacterial community structure was significantly correlated with multiple physicochemical properties, including porosity, salinity, pH, and available nitrogen, whereas fungal composition showed no significant correlation with key amended factors such as EC or SOC. PICRUSt2 analysis predicted a higher abundance of functional genes related to energy and vitamin metabolism in organic treatments. Fungal communities exhibited saprophytic dominance, with FC treatment significantly augmenting a specialized functional group indicative of enhanced soil restoration capacity. Collectively, these results support the integration of bio-organic fertilizer and nano-carbon as an effective strategy for optimizing soil properties and restructuring microbial communities in saline soils.
Keywords: Coastal saline-alkali farmland, Driving factors, Functional gene prediction, Organic amendment, Soil microbial structure
Received: 07 Oct 2025; Accepted: 12 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Xiao, Chen, Yao, Wang 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: Guangming Liu
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