ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Nutrition
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1665661
Blending sludge alkaline hydrolysate and urea affects grape yield and quality by regulating soil bacterial communities
Provisionally accepted
Donghe Xue1,2Yan Yang2Huofeng Zhang2Yijie Quan2Zejin Li3
Zixu Li2Wei Wang2
Huijuan Bo2*Dongsheng Jin1,2Minggang Xu1,2Qiang Zhang1,2Zhiping Yang1,2- 1Soil Health Laboratory in Shanxi Province, Taiyuan, China
- 2College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taiyuan, China
- 3College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, China
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Fertilization is vital for improving grape (Vitis vinifera L.) yield and quality. Unlike traditional nitrogen fertilizers, the mechanisms by which sludge alkaline hydrolysate (SAH), a novel fertilizer, influences grape quality and yield are still poorly understood. In this study, six treatments were established: 20% SAH + 80% urea (M1), 40% SAH + 60% urea (M2), 60% SAH + 40% urea (M3), 80% SAH + 20% urea (M4), pure SAH (M5), and pure urea (M6). The effects of applying SAH and urea mixtures to grapes were evaluated, with focus on performance parameters, soil nutrients, and microbial communities. The results show that 60–80% SAH application significantly enhanced grape stem thickness, chlorophyll content, photosynthetic efficiency, fruit quality, and increased yield. Concurrently, it elevated soil nutrient contents, improved microbial community structure, and altered nitrogen cycle gene copy numbers. Molecular ecological network analyses indicated that Firmicutes, Acidobacteriota, Gemmatimonadota, and Ascomycota were key taxa. Bacterial–fungal cooperation was the dominant interaction, accounting for 65.98–94.61% of all observed microbial interactions, compared to antagonistic interactions. Mantel analysis showed that bacterial community and nitrogen cycle genes (ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB), nitrogen fixation hydrogenase (nifH)) were important for grape yield and quality. These findings offer guidance for the effective use of SAH in grape production. Future studies should elucidate how SAH regulates fruit quality-related gene expression to uncover its mechanisms and enable its full-scale use in viticulture.
Keywords: Bacterial–fungal interactions, Sludge alkaline hydrolysate, grape nutrition, Sustainablefertilization, yield
Received: 14 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xue, Yang, Zhang, Quan, Li, Li, Wang, Bo, Jin, Xu, Zhang and Yang. 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: Huijuan Bo, College of Resources and Environment, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taiyuan, China
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