ABSTRACT
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Agricultural production systems, like all terrestrial ecosystems, consist of two obligatory mutualistic components, an above-ground producer subsystem and a below-ground decomposer system. Plants are responsible for the amount of carbon entering the system, but the below-ground heterotrophic consumers ultimately govern the availability of nutrients (produced by mineralization of organic matter from above-ground organisms) required for plant productivity (1). Conventional agriculture differs from natural ecosystems by supplying a large part of the nutrients as chemical fertilizers and/or organic residues (2) that nourish above-ground crops and influence below-ground organisms, hence understanding structure and functioning of the below-ground system is necessary to improve crop and soil properties.
