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Grasses procure key soil nutrients for clovers

Nature Plants volume 8, pages 923–929 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Rhizobial nitrogen fixation in legumes provides spillover benefits to neighbouring plants such as pasture grasses. Generally, it is understood to be unidirectional between plant functional groups, providing a benefit from legumes to grasses. We question whether bidirectional complementarity also exists in terms of exploiting the wider soil nutrient pool. We test this hypothesis using soil cores with their component vegetation assemblages sampled from a hill country pasture in South Island, New Zealand. The soil was deficient in key essential elements: P, S, B, Mo and Ni. Facilitation from grasses to clovers was evident; legume–grass mixtures procured more nutrients from the soil than when either species was growing alone. When grasses and clover grow together in unfertilized grassland, more nitrogen is procured by the plant community, and other limiting plant nutrients in the soil are better exploited. Coexistence with grasses is favourable to clovers in terms of soil biogeochemistry.

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Fig. 1: Uptake of nutrients into foliage.
Fig. 2: Nutrient concentrations in foliage and soil pore water.
Fig. 3: Yields of clovers and grasses.
Fig. 4: Nutrient concentrations in foliage according to assemblage type.
Fig. 5: Uptake of nutrients according to assemblage type.
Fig. 6: Yield of clover–grass assemblages after fertilizer applications.

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Data availability

The raw data supporting the findings of this study are available through https://data.lincoln.ac.nz/. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

The research team are grateful to the Miss E. L. Hellaby Indigenous Grasslands Research Trust for grant funding to support Z.W. for his PhD stipend and operational funds. Special thanks also to S. Stephen, B. Richards, E. Huang, L. Hassall and R. Cresswell for practical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Lincoln University, Lincoln, New Zealand

    Zhang Wei, Thomas Maxwell & Nicholas Dickinson

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Brett Robinson

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  2. Thomas Maxwell
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the planning and execution of the project and to manuscript preparation. Z.W. carried out the practical work and data analysis as part of his PhD programme supervised by N.D., T.M. and B.R. N.D. and Z.W. are responsible for the final manuscript draft.

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Correspondence to Zhang Wei, Thomas Maxwell, Brett Robinson or Nicholas Dickinson.

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Nature Plants thanks Rafael Clemente, Chris Anderson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wei, Z., Maxwell, T., Robinson, B. et al. Grasses procure key soil nutrients for clovers. Nat. Plants 8, 923–929 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-022-01210-1

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