Ecosystem functions
At the time of harvest (80 days after planting) a total of 10 responses were measured that reflect plant and soil functioning of efficient nutrient cycling and enhanced plant performance: four soil enzyme activities 1) cellobiohydrolase (CBH), 2) β-1,4-glucosidase (βG), 3) β-1,4-N-acetylglucosaminidase (NAG), and 4) alkaline phosphatase (ALP). CBH and βG are related to soil carbon that contribute to the degradation of cellulose (Ljungdahl and Eriksson, 1985). NAG contributes to the degradation of chitin and plays a role in soil nitrogen cycling (Sinsabaugh et al., 2008). ALP can release soil phosphate, and related to AMF phosphorus uptake and transport (Larsen et al., 1996; Turner et al., 2002). Two greenhouse gases emission, 5) CH4 and 6) N2O that are two potent long-lived greenhouse gases (Mar et al., 2022; Thompson et al., 2019). We included four soil and plant responses indicating plant nutrient use efficiency which were 7) soil NO3--N and 8) soil NH4+-N contents, 9) net photosynthetic rate, which represents the carbon fixation capacity of the ecosystem and is the basis of primary productivity and 10) above-ground biomass, an important indicator to reflect primary production (Garland et al., 2021). In our study, higher emissions of N2O and CH4 from the soil were considered negative because they indicate a greater greenhouse effect and more soil nutrient loss. Similarly, higher residual plant-available soil NO₃⁻-N and NH₄⁺-N were considered dysfunctional, as they indicate less efficient nitrogen use. Therefore, these four values were inverted by 1-x. We calculated ecosystem multifunctionality using the average method (Maestre et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2024). This was done by the ‘getStdAndMeanFunctions ’ function in R package ‘multifunc’ (Byrnes et al., 2014).