Air-drying and long time preservation of soil do not significantly impact microbial community composition and structure

To determine whether archived air-dried soils can be potentially used to explore microbial information upon sampling, we examined microbial community dynamics during soil air-drying and long time preserving. Fresh soils from five long-term fertilization treatments were sampled, air-dried, and preserved. Soil microbial community was characterized at specific intervals (from 0 h to 8192 h) by Illumina sequencing. The results showed that both prokaryotic and fungal community profiles did not substantially change during air-drying and long time preserving. The fertilization effects on microbial community structure could still be identified using the air-dried soils. These findings suggest that air-drying and preserving exerts an almost negligible impact on soil microbial community profiles, laying the foundation for utilizing worldwide archived soils to investigate microbial community.