*2.2. Soil Microbial Biomass*

The chloroform fumigation extraction method [21] was used to estimate the microbial biomass carbon (MBC). In details, the air-dried soil was pre-incubated for five days at 30 ◦C in open glass jars at field capacity. Three replicates of each soil (12.5 g) were fumigated with free ethanol chloroform for 24 h in vacuum desiccators at dark condition, and other three replicates were not fumigated as blank. Both the fumigated and non-fumigated soil samples were extracted with 0.5 M K2SO4 for 30 min and the resulting extracts were filtered. Potassium dichromate method [21] was used to measure MBC in filtrates.
