Composting pig manure and sawdust with urease inhibitor: succession of nitrogen functional genes and bacterial community

Understanding the relationship between nitrogen (N) cycle and N transformation-related functional genes is crucial to reduce N loss during composting process. Urease inhibitor (UI) is widely used to reduce N loss in agriculture. However, the effects of UI on N transformation and related N functional genes during composting have not been well investigated. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of a urease inhibitor (UI) on N functional genes and bacterial community succession during pig manure composting. Results showed that the addition of UI decreased the ammonium N content during the thermophilic stage and notably increased the total N and nitrite N contents of the final compost. The UI significantly decreased the abundances of amoA , nirS , nirK , and nosZ during the initial composting stage, while the opposite trend was observed at the maturation stage. Bacterial community richness and diversity were increased after the UI amendment, but the relative abundance of the phyla Firmicutes and Proteobacteria significantly decreased compared with control during the thermophilic stage. Redundancy analysis indicated that the evaluated environmental factors and bacterial community showed a cumulative 94.7% contribution to the total variation in N functional genes. In summary, UI addition is a recommended method for N conservation during composting, but the added forms of UI, such as delayed addition, combined with adsorbing materials, or microorganism inoculant, should be further evaluated.