Microbial biomass carbon dynamics in a long-term tillage and crop rotation experiment under semiarid Mediterranean conditions

Microbial biomass carbon (MBC) of soil is an important ecological indicator of nutrientcycling and soil fertility. In addition, it responds to the changes of soil fertility morerapidly than soil organic matter. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the effectof a long-term implementation of a conservative soil management strategy (No Tillage[NT]) compared to the inversion tillage (conventional tillage [CT]) on the soil MBC ina range of crops - continuous durum wheat (WW), wheat after fababean (FW) and fababean after wheat (WF).MBC of NT plots was higher than CT. In addition, the content of MBC varied withsampling time during the growing season; this variation did not show a consistent patternwith tillage techniques or the crop species. Further research is needed to elucidate theeffects of tillage and crop on the MBC dynamics within the soil profile in the semi-aridMediterranean environment.