Soil multifunctionality is essential for sustainable agriculture, as soils not only need to support crop growth but also maintain soil biodiversity and sustain other critical ecosystem functions. However, the focus of intensive agriculture on maximizing crop yield has reduced the multifunctional capacity of soil. Here, we examined how crop species can be used to enhance individual soil functions and multifunctionality. We grew twelve common crop species, organized into four groups: legumes (broad bean, green bean, soybean), crucifers (broccoli, Chinese cabbage, cabbage), cereals (wheat, maize, oat), and a vegetable mix (eggplant, chili pepper, leek) under controlled conditions. We measured how crop species affected individual soil functions (plant biomass production, nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and disease suppressiveness), soil multifunctionality, and the balance in the performance of these functions, expressed as evenness of functionality. We found that crop species have specific impacts on soil functions and multifunctionality. Broad bean enhanced multifunctionality by enhancing biomass production and nutrient cycling, while Chinese cabbage and broccoli increased multifunctionality via disease suppressiveness and carbon storage functions. There was a positive correlation between multifunctionality and the evenness of functionality, suggesting that crops enhanced multiple soil functions simultaneously. We conclude that no single crop species consistently increased all soil functions. However, most crop species contributed to soil multifunctionality by stimulating either a balanced combination of nutrient and biomass production-related functions or disease and carbon storage-related functions. Therefore, enhancing soil multifunctionality in agricultural systems may require selecting crop species that are complementary in their effects on soil functions. We propose that optimizing the multifunctionality of entire crop rotations instead of focusing only on yield offers a novel perspective for enhancing the sustainability of food production. Such a multifunctional perspective on crop rotations may also be applicable to intercropping, and both will require attention to keep the agricultural system diversified.

This dataset contains measurements of analysis for soil functions and soil multifunctionality. Soils were conditioned by different crop species analyzed for nitrogen content, mineralization rate, basal respiration, active carbon, total carbon and nitrogen, and soil organic matter.