Abstract
Soil erosion has caused the loss of black soil and exposed the soil parent material in the cultivated layer of sloping farmland in Northeast China. Straw return (STR) and manure fertilization (MF) are critical measures to improve soil quality and crop yield. However, the effect of STR and MF on the soil properties of the parent material remains unclear. We conducted a 1-year pot experiment in the field using the soil parent material of degraded black soil to evaluate the effects of STR and MF on soil nutrients, microbial community, and soybean yield. We analyzed these effects using two treatments (STR and MF) in three soybean growth stages (seedling, flowering, and maturity) and a control group (CK). The MF treatment had higher α and β diversity of soil microbial than the CK during all soybean growth stages. Similarly, STR had higher soil microbial α diversity at the maturity stage and lower diversity at the seedling stage. Co-occurrence network analysis suggested that STR and MF increased the proportion of positively correlated edges in soil bacterial and fungal networks compared to the CK. Notably, the treatments enriched beneficial taxa, such as Schizothecium (fungi) and Massilia (bacteria), which are associated with organic matter decomposition and nitrogen cycling. STR and MF significantly improved soil organic matter, total nitrogen, and carbon-nitrogen ratio (p < 0.05). Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that STR and MF directly increased soybean yield. This effect was primarily mediated by the significantly higher soil organic matter, total carbon, total nitrogen, and carbon-to-nitrogen ratio in the treatments than in the CK (p < 0.05). In summary, STR and MF improved soil fertility and soil microbial community diversity of degraded black soil. This study provides scientific methods to improve the fertility of degraded black soil and increase soybean production in the short term.