ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the effect of cover cropping practices on soil biology and overall soil food web. Soil food-web health is discussed using soil nematodes and their community structure as bio-indicators of soil biological quality. Soil biota may be characterised on the basis of organism size, their function and structure of the soil food web. Soil organisms decrease in size and increase in number, from higher to lower trophic level. Soil organisms at each trophic level serve as predators of organisms present at a lower trophic level, or pathogens of the ones present at a higher trophic level, contributing to nutrient release and recycling and thereby impacting crop productivity. Microflora, autotrophic and heterotrophic, comprises bacteria, fungi and green algae. Autotrophic microflora constitutes a small proportion of the soil microbial biomass and biological activity but plays a significant role in the oxidation of ammonium, nitrate and sulphur and in fixation of atmospheric nitrogen.
