Chunyan Zheng

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Chinese Academy of Sciences

Soil salinization poses a critical problem, adversely affecting plant development and sustainable agriculture. Plants can produce soil legacy effects through interactions with the soil environments. Salt tolerance of plants in saline soils is not only determined by their own stress tolerance but is also closely related to soil legacy effects. Creat...

Ecological restoration in coastal saline land is of great significance to regional ecological security and development. However, little is known about how soil physicochemical properties and temporal variation of soil water and salt associated with development of plant communities in this region. In this study, we conducted a transect survey of the...

Plant genomes encode many receptor-like kinases (RLKs) that localize to the cell surface and perceive a wide variety of environmental cues to initiate downstream signaling cascades. Whether these RLKs participate in dehydration stress signaling in plants is largely unknown. DROOPY LEAF 1 (DPY1), a leucine-rich repeat (LRR)-RLK, was recently shown t...

Karst region in southwestern China is an ecologically fragile area with slow pedogenesis, shallow soil layer, discontinuous soil cover structure and low water holding capacity. Excessive human disturbances and improper land uses led to land degradation, even serious rocky desertification. From the 9th to the 13th Five-Year Plan, the ecological rest...

Peatlands, which play a vital role in the global storage of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), have been artificially drained worldwide over the last few decades. However, the effects of long-term artificial drainage on the soil N cycle and subsequent potent greenhouse gas emissions in peatland soils are not fully understood. In this study, we investigat...

Growing concerns about the negative environmental effects of excessive chemical fertilizer input in fruit production have resulted in many attempts looking for adequate substitution. Biogas slurry as a representative organic fertilizer has the potential to replace chemical fertilizer for improvement of sustainability. However, it is still poorly kn...

Aims The process of karst rocky desertification has been closely related to improper land use in southwest China. Now this habitat is the subject of an important ecological restoration project. However, the changes in soil properties and microbial characteristics in response to this vegetation restoration remain poorly understood. Methods We invest...

Groundwater and nitrogen fertilizer overuse severely threatens crop productions; thus, current ecological agriculture requires low irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer inputs. The effects of combined reduced irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer addition on soil organism (e.g., mite) community and biodiversity remain poorly understood. We analyzed soil...

The salt-affected soil had been reclaimed in the 1980s in the North China Plain, but soil nutrients and organic carbon deficiencies still led to low crop yields. A long-term experiment was conducted in 1995 to test effects of manure amendment on soil fertility and crop productivity. We hypothesized 15-year manure amendment have improved crop yields...

Soil mite distribution is closely associated with various agricultural activities in agroecosystems. The effects of organic (ORG), low-input (LOW), and conventional (CON) management practices on soil mite abundance and community structure under greenhouse conditions were determined by conducting an experiment at the Quzhou Experimental Station of t...

Soil organic carbon plays an important role in soil fertility and carbon sequestration. In the North China Plain, soil nutrients and organic carbon are still lacking in salt-affected soil after a successfully reclamation in the 1980s. Our objectives were to investigate the effects of land use types under different soil management practices on soil...

A comparative study of organic, low input, conventional vegetable greenhouse systems was conducted to assess the effect of management practices on the soil nematode community. Bacterivores were the most dominant trophic group in all three systems with a mean proportion of over 80%, followed by omnivore-carnivores. In general, organic management pra...