Beneficial Effects of Mixing Kentucky Bluegrass With Red Fescue via Plant-Soil Interactions in Black Soil of Northeast China

Abstract

Continuous monoculture of cool-season turfgrass causes soil degradation, and visual turf quality decline is a major concern in black soil regions of Northeast China. Turf mixtures can enhance turfgrass resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and increase soil microbial diversity. Understanding mechanism by plant-soil interactions and changes of black soil microbial communities in turf mixture is beneficial to restoring the degradation of urbanized black soils and maintaining sustainable development of urban landscape ecology. In this study, based on the previous research of different sowing models, two schemes of turf monoculture and mixture were conducted in field plots during 2016-2018 in a black soil of Heilongjiang province of Northeast China. The mixture turf was established by mixing 50% Kentucky bluegrass "Midnight" (Poa pratensis L.) with 50% Red fescue "Frigg" (Festuca rubra L.); and the monoculture turf was established by sowing with pure Kentucky bluegrass. Turf performance, soil physiochemical properties, and microbial composition from rhizosphere were investigated. Soil microbial communities and abundance were analyzed by Illumina MiSeq sequencing and quantitative PCR methods. Results showed that turfgrass quality, turfgrass biomass, soil organic matter (SOM), urease, alkaline phosphatase, invertase, and catalase activities increased in PF mixture, but disease percentage and soil pH decreased. The microbial diversity was also significantly enhanced under turf mixture model. The microbial community compositions were significantly different between the two schemes. Turf mixtures obviously increased the abundances of Beauveria, Lysobacter, Chryseolinea, and Gemmatimonas spp., while remarkably reduced the abundances of Myrothecium and Epicoccum spp. Redundancy analysis showed that the compositions of bacteria and fungi were related to edaphic parameters, such as SOM, pH, and enzyme activities. Since the increasing of turf quality, biomass, and disease resistance were highly correlated with the changes of soil physiochemical parameters and microbial communities in turf mixture, which suggested that turf mixture with two species (i.e., Kentucky blue grass and Red fescue) changed soil microbial communities and enhanced visual turfgrass qualities through positive plant-soil interactions by soil biota.

Shift of Dominant Species in Plant Community and Soil Chemical Properties Shape Soil Bacterial Community Characteristics and Putative Functions: A Case Study on Topographic Variation in a Mountain Pasture

“…It is in accordance with a previous work which reported that Firmicutes increased by the planting of P. pratensis in a pot experiment [ 38 ]. Moreover, relative abundance of Firmicutes was higher with monoculture of P. pratensis than with the mixture of P. pratensis and Festuca rubra [ 39 ]. This suggested that dominance of P. pratensis in plant community might be favourable for Firmicutes.…”

Amenity Grasses—A Short Insight into Species, Their Applications and Functions

“…It is important to note that there are as many combinations of local environmental factors as there are potential customers. Many other benefits of using mixtures have been also described: higher shoot density, enhanced disease and insect resistance, better shade tolerance, earlier spring green-up, better tolerance to low maintenance, and better turf quality [50,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. For high-maintenance lawn surfaces such as golf greens or football pitches, in many cases, few, high-quality commercial varieties of one species are mixed [70,71].…”

Crop diversity promotes the recovery of fungal communities in saline-alkali areas of the Western Songnen Plain

“…The diversification of cropping systems has been suggested as a way to enhance soil microbiology to promote more sustainable and resilient agricultural systems ( Altieri, 1999 ). Rotation and mixture are being promoted as ecologically sustainable agriculture ( Verret et al, 2020 ; Xie F. C. et al, 2020 ; Xie Y. Y. et al, 2020 ; Jalli et al, 2021 ; Cui et al, 2022 ). It is well known that there are benefits to soil microbial communities and crop productivity in rotation and mixture ( Fujiishi et al, 2020 ; Benitez et al, 2021 ; He et al, 2021 ; Che et al, 2022 ).…”