Soil microbial communities are fundamental to soil health and ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes. This study assessed how soil nutrient variation influences microbial community structure and ecosystem multifunctionality in tea gardens across three counties in Longnan, China. Key findings revealed that Kangxian tea garden soils exhibited 18–25% higher bacterial and fungal richness and diversity indices than Wenxian, which had the lowest values among the three counties. Co-occurrence network analysis indicated a 32% higher proportion of positive (cooperative) interactions among microbial taxa in Wenxian soils. Null model analysis showed that bacterial community assembly was primarily driven by deterministic heterogeneous selection, whereas fungal assembly was governed by stochastic ecological drift. Functionally, Wenxian soils demonstrated 22% higher carbon sequestration, 19% higher nutrient storage, and 17% higher nutrient supply than the other counties (p < 0.05), while Kangxian soils had 21% greater nutrient cycling and overall ecosystem multifunctionality. Soil C/P and N/P ratios significantly influenced carbon sequestration, nutrient storage, and multifunctionality (explaining up to 48% of the variance), while soil pH was a key driver of carbon sequestration, nutrient supply, and cycling. Both bacterial and fungal community structures significantly impacted nutrient storage and multifunctionality. Regional differences in soil nutrients, shaped by tea garden management, directly influence microbial community traits and ecosystem multifunctionality. Targeted nutrient management and enhanced microbial diversity are key to improving soil multifunctionality and sustainability in tea agroecosystems.
Nian et al. (Wed,) studied this question.