Application of rice straw and horse manure coameliorated soil arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community: Impacts on structure and diversity in a degraded field in Eastern China

Abstract

Organic amendments are powerful tools for mitigating land degradation, improving soil fertility and biodiversity. Nevertheless, changes in the diversity and activity of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi during the initial period of soil restoration under different organic amendments (e.g., crop residues and livestock manure) remains poorly understood despite their growing roles in improving soil sustainability. We conducted a six-month experiment with the application of rice straw (RS), horse manure (HM), and both amendments (RH) to an artificially degraded field in Eastern China, and the AM fungal community structure was assessed through Illumina sequencing. The dominance (35.2%) of the identified operational taxonomic units (OTUs) belonged to Glomus, whereas the majority (66.0%) of the recovered sequence reads belonged to Paraglomus. Although no notable changes in AM fungal abundance were observed, the relative abundance of Claroideoglomus significantly increased (p < .05) to 4.3% in the HM-treated soil compared with that in the control (0.1%), and Acaulospora was only detected in the three treated soils. In addition to shaping AM fungal communities, the RH appeared to be the strongest treatment for increasing AM fungal diversity, alkaline phosphatase activity, and glomalin-related soil protein (GRSP) concentrations, and these parameters were positively correlated (p < .05) with edaphic factors, notably the organic carbon concentration. Furthermore, GRSP could be used as an ecological indicator of AM fungal functioning. This study highlights that the combined application of crop residues and livestock manure could have synergistic effects that help to ameliorate the community structure and diversity of AM fungi in degraded fields.

Degradation of soil arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity and functionality accompanied by the aggravation of pepper Phytophthora blight in a facility shed in Southwest China

“…Genomic DNA was extracted from 0.5 g of soil using a FastDNA SPIN Kit (MP Biomedicals), and the quality and quantity were measured by NanoDrop ND‐1000 Spectrophotometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Soil AM fungal abundance was quantified using quantitative PCR (qPCR) on a CFX‐96 TouchTM Real‐Time PCR Detection System (Bio‐Rad Laboratories) with primers NS31/AML2 (Lee et al, 2008; Z. Liu et al, 2021; Simon et al, 1992). The qPCR mixture included 10 μl of SYBR green premix Ex Taq (2×, TaKaRa), 0.8 μl of the 10 μmol L −1 forward and reverse primers, 7.2‐μl sterile ddH 2 O, and 2 μl of soil DNA (10 −1 diluted).…”

“…The 18S SSU ribosomal DNA for Glomeromycota group was selectively amplified based on a nested PCR approach (Liu et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2018), with primers GeoA2/AML2 (Lee et al, 2008; Schwarzott & Schussler, 2001) in the first step, and NS31/AMDGR (Sato et al, 2005; Simon et al, 1992) in the second step. And 5–8 bp barcodes were added to both the 3′ and 5′ ends of the second PCR to distinguish each sample.…”

“…Genomic DNA was extracted from 0.5 g of soil using a FastDNA SPIN Kit (MP Biomedicals), and the quality and quantity were measured by NanoDrop ND-1000 Spectrophotometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Soil AM fungal abundance was quantified using quantitative PCR (qPCR) on a CFX-96 TouchTM Real-Time PCR Detection System (Bio-Rad Laboratories) with primers NS31/AML2 (Lee et al, 2008;Z. Liu et al, 2021;Simon et al, 1992).…”

Impact of Organic Matter on the Growth of Jatropha Curcas and Moringa Oleifera Seedlings Beneath Water Deficit

“…Available nitrogen in the soil was determined (Keeney and Nelson, 1982), total available N was determined by the Micro-Kjeldahl technique (Liu et al, 2021) available phosphorous and potassium were determined according to (Soltanpour and Schwab, 1977). Also, the cation exchange capacity (CEC) was measured by the neutral (pH 7.0) NH4OAc saturation method (Anderson, 1993).…”