Effects of light intensity on the Panax quinquefolius L. growth and soil microbial communities under reduced light spatial heterogeneity: an application to agroforestry systems
Qiaoran Ma, Guobing Tian, Jie Gu, Junwen Chen, Shengchao Yang, Shuhui Zi, Fuseini Issaka, Weizhu Yang, Dehuan Men, Shichao Zheng, Shuran He · 2026
Read Effects of light intensity on the Panax quinquefolius L. growth and soil microbial communities under reduced light spatial heterogeneity: an application to agroforestry systems by Qiaoran Ma, Guobing Tian, Jie Gu, Junwen Chen, Shengchao Yang, Shuhui Zi, Fuseini Issaka, Weizhu Yang, Dehuan Men, Shichao Zheng, Shuran He (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13543438.txt.
Description
Qiaoran Ma and colleagues published a 2026 field study on how light levels shape American ginseng grown under forest canopy, a prized medicinal root often farmed in agroforestry systems. Forest light is patchy, so the team evened out its spatial variation and compared four light transmission levels, from under one percent to nearly twenty percent of full light. They tracked plant physiology, root growth, soil chemistry and enzymes, and the community of soil microbes.
At 13.1 percent transmission the plants coordinated their best response: photosynthesis and chlorophyll rose, a stress chemical fell, and root dry weight beat every other treatment, dramatically exceeding the darkest plot. Soil nitrogen availability and enzyme activity also improved, and particular pH-linked and nitrogen-cycling microbes became more abundant. Path modelling showed light helped roots both directly, through plant physiology, and indirectly, through soil conditions. Moderate shade, evenly spread, is the recipe this study supports.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Qiaoran Ma, Guobing Tian, Jie Gu, Junwen Chen, Shengchao Yang, Shuhui Zi, Fuseini Issaka, Weizhu Yang, Dehuan Men, Shichao Zheng, Shuran He |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 66324 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |