Mycorrhizal Fungal Community of Poplars Growing on Pyrite Tailings Contaminated Site near the River Timok

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Mycorrhizal fungi are of high importance for functioning of forest ecosystems and they could be used as indicators of environmental stress. The aim of this research was to analyze ectomycorrhizal community structure and to determine root colonization rate with ectomycorrhizal, arbuscular mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi of poplars growing on pyrite tailings contaminated site near the river Timok (Eastern Serbia). Materials and Methods: Identification of ectomycorrhizal types was performed by combining morphological and anatomical characterization of ectomycorrhizae with molecular identification approach, based on sequencing of the nuclear ITS rRNA region. Also, colonization of poplar roots with ectomycorrhizal, arbuscular mycorrhizal and dark septated endophytic fungi were analysed with intersection method. Results and Conclusions: Physico-chemical analyses of soil from studied site showed unfavourable water properties of soil, relatively low pH and high content of heavy metals (copper and zinc). In investigated samples only four different ectomycorrhizal fungi were found. To the species level were identified Thelephora terrestris and Tomentella ellisi, while two types remained unidentified. Type Thelephora terrestris made up 89% of all ectomycorrhizal roots on studied site. Consequently total values of Species richness index and Shannon-Weaver diversity index were 0.80 and 0.43, respectively. No structures of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were recorded. Unfavourable environmental conditions prevailing on investigated site caused decrease of ectomycorrhizal types diversity. Our findings point out that mycorrhyzal fungal community could be used as an appropriate indicator of environmental changes.

Plant Genotype Influences Physicochemical Properties of Substrate as Well as Bacterial and Fungal Assemblages in the Rhizosphere of Balsam Poplar

“…These taxa have previously been associated with the rhizosphere microbiome (da Rocha et al, 2013;McBride et al, 2014;Madhaiyan et al, 2015;Qiao et al, 2017); plant growth promotion (e.g., through nitrogen fixation (Caballero-Mellado et al, 2004;Dai et al, 2014;Sun et al, 2015;Jeanbille et al, 2016); the production of IAA (Mehnaz et al, 2010); disease suppression (Xue et al, 2015), and nutrient cycling (Webb et al, 2014;Santoyo et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2017). Additionally, we observed that vegetation increased the relative abundance of ectomycorrhizal taxa, such as Meliniomyces, which have previously been isolated from poplars growing in mine wastes (Gaster et al, 2015;Katanić et al, 2015).…”