RESUMEN
As soil fertility in apple orchard with clean tillage is declined continuously, interplanting herbage in orchard, which is a new orchard management model, plays an important role in improving orchard soil conditions. By using biolog micro-plate technique, this paper studied the functional diversity of soil microbial community under four species of management model in apple orchards, including clear tillage model, interplanting white clover model, interplanting small crown flower model and interplanting cocksfoot model, and the carbon source utilization characteristics of microbial community were explored, which could provide a reference for revealing driving mechanism of ecological process of orchard soil. The results showed that the functional diversity of microbial community had a significant difference among different treatments and in the order of white clover > small crown flower > cocksfoot > clear tillage. The correlation analysis showed that the average well color development (AWCD), Shannon index, Richness index and McIntosh index were all highly significantly positively correlated with soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, microbial biomass carbon, and Shannon index was significantly positively correlated with soil pH. The principal component analysis and the fingerprints of the physiological carbon metabolism of the microbial community demonstrated that grass treatments improved carbon source metabolic ability of soil microbial community, and the soil microbes with perennial legumes (White Clover and small crown flower) had a significantly higher utilization rate in carbohydrates (N-Acetyl-D-Glucosamine, D-Mannitol, ß-Methyl-D-Glucoside), amino acids (Glycyl-L-Glutamic acid, L-Serine, L-Threonine) and polymers (Tween 40, Glycogen) than the soil microbes with clear tillage. It was considered that different treatments had the unique microbial community structure and peculiar carbon source utilization characteristics.
