Modern agriculture should limit its degrading impact on the soils, the natural environment, and the climate. No-tillage soil cultivation technologies, which have been in use for many years and are constantly being improved, are a good example of these actions; although, in-depth studies on their impact on the soil microbial community are currently scarce. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effect of cultivation technology on the soil bacterial community to assess differences that can be reflected in the environmental and agricultural functionality, identifying possible bacterial species with ecological properties. In this context, the composition of bacterial communities (at the phyla, order, class, and species levels) was evaluated under different conditions, such as conventional tillage (CT) (plophing), reduced tillage (RT) (stubble cultivator), strip tillage (ST), and no-tillage (direct sowing on stubble and fallow buffer zone of the experimental field), in a horse bean plantation. Metagenomic methods (next generation sequencing technology, NGS) were used to determine the percentage of individual operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Our study showed that no-tillage cultivation technologies, mainly strip and no-tillage methods, had a positive effect on microbiological communities. In fact, key species related to soil fertility and crop yield, such as Gemmatimonas aurantiaca (a microorganism that reduce nitrous oxide, N₂O in soil) and Aeromicrobium ponti (a beneficial species for the soil environment, essential for the proper functioning of the crop agroecosystem), increased in reduced cultivation technologies. These species can determine soil fertility and crop yields, and therefore, they are very important for sustainable and even regenerative agriculture. Further studies of soil samples collected from other crop plantations under different cropping systems may indicate beneficial microbial species that are important for soil fertility.

Modern agriculture must reverse its degrading influence on soils, the natural environment, and the climate. No-till soil cultivation technologies, which have been used for many years and are constantly being improved, are an example of such activities. Our research assumes that soil samples taken from a faba bean plantation in the twentieth year of the static field experiment will show differences in the composition of bacterial communities at the level of phylum, orders, classes, and species. The differences would be manifested by the environmental and agricultural functionality of the microorganisms in the soil cultivation system-dependent manner and they would indicate the bacterial species with environment-friendly properties. As a result, five variants of the soil samples were distinguished: 1 – plantless, fallow buffer zone of the field experiment – sample ‘0’, 2 – conventional tillage (ploughing), 3 – reduced tillage (stubble cultivator), 4 – strip tillage,5 – no tillage (direct drilling into stubble). Our study showed that the no-till cultivation technologies, mainly the strip till and no-till methods, applied at the horse bean plantation had a positive influence on microbial communities. The number of OTUs of species such as Gemmatimonas aurantiaca and Aeromicrobium ponti increased. The abundance of these species determines soil fertility and yield of crops. They are also environment and climate friendly, and therefore very important for sustainable or even regenerative agriculture. Further investigations of soil samples collected from another plantation of crops in different tillage systems may indicate functional species of microorganisms which are important for climate change and for the fertility of the soil.