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A mineralisation-based method for estimating soil microbial carbon use efficiency

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Lin, H., Sizmur, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9835-7195 and Shaw, L. J. (2026) A mineralisation-based method for estimating soil microbial carbon use efficiency. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 110143. ISSN 0038-0717 doi: 10.1016/j.soilbio.2026.110143 (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) reflects how microorganisms allocate carbon between mineralisation and biosynthesis, with consequences for soil carbon storage. We present a mineralisation-based ¹³C-glucose method that infers substrate-specific CUE from time series of 13C-CO2 alone using a two-component model, thereby avoiding the extraction of microbial biomass 13C and a fixed kEC conversion factor that is a requirement of widely-used 13C-biomass/CO2 partitioning methods. Applied to a temperate sandy loam grassland soil, the approach yielded a CUE of 0.80± 0.005 compared with 0.70 ± 0.023 from the conventional 6h-13C-biomass/CO2 partitioning approach. The 13C-mass balance for the mineralisation-based method revealed a greater 13C recovery (~87%) than for the biomass/CO2 partitioning method (~54%). Because the mineralisation-based estimate integrates intracellular and extracellular biosynthetic products, it provides a less assumption-sensitive CUE under standardised incubations. Furthermore, our method avoids the requirement for labour-intensive fumigation-extraction protocols which currently present a barrier to high throughput CUE estimation of large numbers of soil samples. The reported mineralisation-based CUE value represents a glucose-specific, incubation-condition CUE and should not be interpreted as in situ CUE for native SOC.

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Item Type Article
URI https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/128878
Identification Number/DOI 10.1016/j.soilbio.2026.110143
Refereed Yes
Divisions Interdisciplinary centres and themes > Chemical Analysis Facility (CAF)
Science > School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science > Department of Geography and Environmental Science
Interdisciplinary centres and themes > Soil Research Centre
Publisher Elsevier
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