Abstract
Our understanding of the impacts of tillage practice on the root-associated bacterial community structure and diversity in maize production systems remained unclear. This study evaluated the root-associated bacterial communities and diversity under different tillage managements to identify management practices that effectively support sustainable maize production. This study investigated the effects of two-year different tillage managements (rotary and no-tillage) on the root-associated bacterial community structure and diversity in the maize at the silking stage in 2019 and 2020, respectively. We analyzed the maize root-associated bacterial community structure using Illumina MiSeq amplicon sequencing. Our findings revealed that Proteobacteria was the most common (45.78%), followed by Actinobacteria (11.61%), Bacteroidetes (10.67%), Firmicutes (9.24%), and Verrucomicrobia (7.22%), accounting for more than 88% of all the phyla regardless of tillage practice. In the diversity of root-associated bacterial communities, significant interactions between tillage practice and sampling year were observed for the number of ASVs, the Shannon index, and evenness, while the Simpson index was significantly higher under no-tillage compared to rotary tillage. Furthermore, the rootassociated bacterial community structure in the maize evaluated by principal coordinate analysis significantly differed between rotary tillage and no-tillage management. Taken together, tillage management was a main driver in shaping the root-associated bacterial communities in the two-year maize cropping systems on an andosol.
https://ror.org/05jk51a88 
