In response to China’s drive to bring newly cultivated land into production, this study evaluated how combined organic fertilizer and microbial inoculants affect soil quality, bacterial community structure, and maize yield. Four treatments were evaluated: FC (chemical fertilizer only), T50 (50% organic fertilizer + 50% chemical fertilizer), T50M (T50 plus microbial inoculant), and CK (no fertilizer). T50M significantly increased yield compared to FC and CK (p < 0.05), achieving the highest yield of 6995.73 kg ha−1. This was 20.09% greater than FC. Community composition analyses showed that soil in newly cultivated land was dominated by Blastocatellia, Vicinamibacteria, and Alphaproteobacteria, together accounting for over 35.7% of total bacterial abundance. Redundancy analysis at the class level explained 55.7% of variance; soil organic matter (SOM) and available potassium positively correlated with Alphaproteobacteria and Bacteroidia, while available phosphorus and nitrate nitrogen aligned with Actinobacteria and Bacilli. Path analysis indicated that SOM and total nitrogen were the strongest positive drivers of yield. Actinobacteria and Acidobacteriae also showed direct positive effects, whereas Verrucomicrobiae had a negative effect. These results demonstrate that integrated organic–microbial amendments can enhance soil fertility and alter microbial diversity toward taxa that can improve maize productivity.
Dai et al. (2025) studied this question.