Raising rice seedlings in flat trays has become the main method for mechanized transplanting of rice in China. However, seedling blocks raised by this method were easily cracked in practice, and this problem can be solved by padding a thin ramie fiber nonwoven film on the bottom surface of seedling tray. This study was conducted to determine the effects of this film on root-zone environment of rice seedlings. The results showed that on the 10 th day after sowing, the soil inorganic nitrogen, especially nitrate nitrogen, content in the root-zone of the film treatment were considerably higher than in the no-film treatment, in contrast, the soil organic matter content was lower in the film treatment, and by the 20 th day, the gap between treatments was enlarged. After applying the film, the Chao 1 index and Shannon index values for the soil bacterial community diversity decreased, and the rice seedlings were shorter, had higher root/shoot ratios, lower nitrate contents, and higher soluble sugar contents. We conclude that application of the ramie fiber nonwoven film resulted in substantial changes in the soil nutrient and bacterial community in root-zone in a short time, which significantly impacted the growth and development of rice seedlings.Rice is a major staple food for about 50% of the world's population 1 . Rice fields account for more than 12% of global cropland area 2 . China is one of the major rice-producing countries in the world with a rice cultivation area of about 30 million hectares, accounting for approximately 18.6% of the world's rice field area 3 . With an increasingly scarce rural labor force, raising rice seedlings in flat trays followed by mechanical transplantation has become a prevalent cultivation method to replace hand transplanting in Chinese rice production 4 . However, this method has a serious defect in practice, as the root system of the seedlings was often not sufficiently intertwined by the optimum transplanting date (20-25 days after sowing). Insufficient rooting in the seedling block means the rice seedling blocks easily crack (Fig. 1c), so the efficiency of mechanical transplanting was seriously decreased 5 .In recent years, An innovative ramie fiber nonwoven film (Fig. 1a) was developed to solve this problem 6 . This film was made of waste fiber from the ramie spinning industry and modified starch, and was constructed using a dry-laid, nonwoven process. Unlike the traditional agricultural nonwoven films that are usually used as mulching materials to cover soil, this film was used to pad the bottom surface of a seedling tray, and was covered by soil (Fig. 1b). The film was quite thin (only about 0.15-0.25 mm); however, previous research 7,8 showed that the efficiency of machine transplanting was significantly improved by using this film, as it promoted the growth of rice seedling roots and helped to form a strong, not easily broken seedling block (Fig. 1d). Moreover, it can significantly improve rice seedling quality, speed up the emergence of new tillers after transplanting, and ...