Soil chemical factors contributing to differences in bacterial communities among tea field soils and their relationships with tea quality.

Introduction: Soil chemical properties and bacterial communities play key roles in shaping tea plant nutrient status and quality. While the relationships between soil bacterial communities and plant nutrient status have been investigated, the specific role by which soil bacterial communities interacted with soil properties to influence tea plant nutrients and quality remained underexplored. Methods: In this study, different soil types were collected from tea gardens and designated as soil A (pH 3.41), soil B (pH 3.75), soil C (pH 4.16), soil D (pH 4.17) and soil E (pH 5.56) based on the initial soil pH. We conducted pot cultivation of tea plant 'Yabukita' to investigate how soil chemical factors affect bacterial communities and their influences on the nutrient status and quality of tea plants, and finally explored the complex relationships between soil bacterial features and tea quality. Results and discussion: The results showed that soil bacterial α-diversity was higher level in soils D and E, with distinct β-diversity patterns separating higher pH soils (D and E) from lower pH soils (A, B, and C). The dominant amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) in soils were