arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and related soil microbial activity drive carbon mineralization in the maize rhizosphere this research is aimed to investigate the effect of arbuscular mycorrhiza am fungi on soil microbial activity and carbon mineralization in the maize rhizosphere under potted condition glomus etunicatum was used for our experiment results showed that am symbiosis increased the levels of microorganism in the maize rhizosphere soil and enhanced activity of soil microbial enzymes after inoculating am fungi the contents of dissolved organic carbon doc microbial biomass carbon mbc and readily oxidizable carbon roc in the rhizosphere soil of maize increased with varying degrees we obtained strong evidence that higher contents of mbc doc roc superior number of microbes and stronger soil enzyme activities could be responsible for the higher rate of carbon mineralization in am fungi treatment am fungi inoculation was confirmed to be effective to improve the soil quality for largerscale ecoengineering