Cassava/peanut intercropping improves soil quality via rhizospheric microbes increased available nitrogen contents

Abstract

Background: Intercropping, an essential cultivation pattern in modern agricultural systems, increases crop yields and soil quality. Cassava and peanut intercropping systems exhibit advantages in solar utilization and cadmium absorption, etc. However, the inner mechanisms need to be elucidated. In this study, Illumina MiSeq platform was used to reveal the rhizospheric microbes and soil quality in cassava/peanut intercropping systems, and the results provided a reference for the application of this method in studying other intercropping systems. Results: Both intercropping cassava/peanut (IP) and intercropping peanut/cassava (IC) systems significantly increased available N, available K, pH value, and urease activity, comparing with that in monocropping cassava (MC) and monocropping peanut (MP) system. However, there were few effects on the total N, total P, total K, available P, organic matter, protease activity, catalase activity, sucrase activity, and acid phosphatase activity. Both IP and MP soils contained more bacteria and fungi than those in the IC and MC soils, which were mainly made of Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria. Intercropping remarkably increased the number of Nitrospirae in IP and IC soils comparing those in MC and MP soils. Redundancy analysis (RDA) revealed that the abundances of DA101, Pilimelia, and Ramlibacter were positively correlated to the soil quality. These results suggest that intercropping enhances the available nitrogen content of soil through increasing the quantity of rhizospheric microbes, especially that of DA101 and Pilimelia. Conclusions: The cassava/peanut intercropping system improves soil quality through increasing the available nitrogen content and abundance of DA101, Pilimelia, and Ramlibacter in the soil.

Nitrogen and phosphorus additions accelerate decomposition of slow carbon pool and lower total soil organic carbon pool in alpine meadows

“…DNA was extracted from the soils using the PowerSoil DNA extraction kit (MoBio Laboratories, Inc.) (Fierer et al, 2012). Bacterial and fungal community composition was analyzed based on high‐throughput sequencing as the detailed procedure described in Tang et al (2020).…”

Sugarcane/peanut intercropping system improves the soil quality and increases the abundance of beneficial microbes

“…On March 10, 2016-2018, sugarcane and peanut were planted simultaneously in the field. Monocropping sugarcane and monocropping peanut systems were used as control, and sugarcane/peanut intercropping system was the treatment group, which contained intercropping sugarcane and intercropping peanut, as previously reported [19]. The experiment was arranged in plots (6 × 8 m) in a randomized design with three replicates in each treatment.…”

“…The available N, available P, available K, and organic matter contents were measured by the alkaline hydrolysis diffusion method, sodium bicarbonate extraction/Mo-Sb colorimetry, ammonium acetate extraction/flame photometry, and the potassium bichromate titrimetric method, respectively. Catalase activity [22], sucrase activity, proteinase activity, urease activity [23], and acid phosphatase activity [24] were measured by permanganate titration, sodium thiosulfate titration, ninhydrin colorimetry, indophenol blue colorimetry, and the disodium phosphate benzene colorimetric method, respectively [19].…”

Long-Term Maize-Legume Intercropping Shifts Structure and Composition of Soil Microbiome with Potential Impacts on Ecosystem Services and Food Safety

“…For example, in wheat-soybean intercropping (Bargaz et al 2017), maize/wheat-faba bean intercropping (Wang et al 2020), millet-mung bean intercropping (Dang et al 2020), and cucumber-cereal intercropping (Li and Wu 2018). Tang et al (2020), observed a higher diversity of both bacterial and fungal species in cassava-peanut intercropping, but also peanut monoculture, suggesting that the leguminous peanut intercrop was responsible for the observed higher soil microbial diversity, a factor we could not correct for in our study. Similarly, Gao et al (2019) observed that peanut monoculture plots had the highest richness and abundance of soil bacteria compared to intercropping tobacco after two and four years.…”

“…In addition, the abundance of bene cial soil bacteria was higher in intercropping systems with complete and semi-below ground interactions compared to monoculture systems (Li et al 2018). Tang et al (2020) observed variations in availability of soil minerals and enzymes as a result of intercropping with either peanut or cassava. In the same study, certain bacterial groups including Nitrospirae increased in abundance, and others were associated with improved soil quality.…”