Abstract
Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Evaluating the effectiveness of long-term CSA interventions requires considering their impact on crop performance and soil health, which is also influenced and mediated by soil biological communities. The legacy effects of CSA practices on subsequent crops and across rotations are poorly documented and understood. Similarly, changes in the soil arthropod community after crop rotation and the subsequent crop cycle are not taken into consideration in the CSA practices study. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the legacy impact of various CSA practices and single cover crop species (pea and canola) under different termination methods on soil arthropods under both field and greenhouse conditions. The soil was collected from replicated field trials in Moscow, Idaho, for both field and greenhouse experiments. For the field experiment, the soil collected was used for immediate arthropod extraction. The soil arthropods were extracted using Berlese-Tullgren funnels and identified to the lowest practical taxonomic level. In addition, soil arthropod communities were compared using a soil biological quality arthropod index (QBS-ar). For the greenhouse experiment, soil arthropods and wheat performance were measured from the field-collected soils. We measured wheat growth traits (shoot and root), total arthropod abundance, taxa richness, functional group abundance, Shannon diversity, soil arthropod quality (QBS-ar), and soil arthropod community composition. Community composition was analyzed with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity, and ordination was done with non-metric multidimensional scaling and principal coordinate analysis. In the field experiment, compost amendment and cover crop treatment had higher arthropod abundance, taxa richness, Shannon diversity, and QBS-ar in the post-implementation year (2025) than from the 2024 baseline. In the termination study, pea plots terminated before maturity supported greater arthropod diversity and abundance than non-terminated canola plots. In a greenhouse experiment, legacy effects were more evident in plant height, shoot biomass, and yield, while arthropod community composition was not different from the baseline. While termination methods did not alter plant performance, non-terminated pea soils supported a better root structure of wheat grown in the greenhouse. Overall, climate-smart agricultural practices promoted the abundance and diversity of arthropods in the field experiment and enhanced plant performance in greenhouse experiments, showing potential to improve both soil health and crop productivity, it needs to be practiced for a longer duration to see the full effects.