Responses of fungal community composition to long‐term chemical and organic fertilization strategies in Chinese Mollisols

Abstract

How fungi respond to long‐term fertilization in Chinese Mollisols as sensitive indicators of soil fertility has received limited attention. To broaden our knowledge, we used high‐throughput pyrosequencing and quantitative PCR to explore the response of soil fungal community to long‐term chemical and organic fertilization strategies. Soils were collected in a 35‐year field experiment with four treatments: no fertilizer, chemical phosphorus, and potassium fertilizer (PK), chemical phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen fertilizer (NPK), and chemical phosphorus and potassium fertilizer plus manure (MPK). All fertilization differently changed soil properties and fungal community. The MPK application benefited soil acidification alleviation and organic matter accumulation, as well as soybean yield. Moreover, the community richness indices (Chao1 and ACE) were higher under the MPK regimes, indicating the resilience of microbial diversity and stability. With regards to fungal community composition, the phylum Ascomycota was dominant in all samples, followed by Zygomycota, Basidiomycota, Chytridiomycota, and Glomeromycota. At each taxonomic level, the community composition dramatically differed under different fertilization strategies, leading to different soil quality. The NPK application caused a loss of Leotiomycetes but an increase in Eurotiomycetes, which might reduce the plant–fungal symbioses and increase nitrogen losses and greenhouse gas emissions. According to the linear discriminant analysis (LDA) coupled with effect size (LDA score > 3.0), the NPK application significantly increased the abundances of fungal taxa with known pathogenic traits, such as order Chaetothyriales, family Chaetothyriaceae and Pleosporaceae, and genera Corynespora, Bipolaris, and Cyphellophora. In contrast, these fungi were detected at low levels under the MPK regime. Soil organic matter and pH were the two most important contributors to fungal community composition.

Dynamics of soil properties and fungal community structure in continuous-cropped alfalfa fields in Northeast China

“…4F). Some species of the fungal genus Cyphellophora are potential pathogens (Decock et al, 2003; Ma et al, 2018), and the relative abundance of OTU1311 was correlated significantly with some soil properties, such as soil TC, TN, TP and AP (Table S7), suggesting that continuous cropping may promote the proliferation of pathogens (Guo et al, 2011; Ranzi et al, 2017).…”

Effects of Long-Term Straw Management and Potassium Fertilization on Crop Yield, Soil Properties, and Microbial Community in a Rice–Oilseed Rape Rotation

“…Our study also confirmed that NPS treatment had a higher relative abundance of Proteobacteria than other treatments, while the application of K fertilizer had no significant impact on the dominant bacterial groups (Figure 2). Both long-term and short-term studies have found that the abundance of Acidobacteria decreased significantly with the increase in NPK fertilizer, which was closely associated with soil pH value [56,60], whereas, in our study, the relative abundance of Acidobacteria, serving as typically oligotrophic bacteria in NP (15.4%) and NPKS (24.3%) treatments, was higher than that in NPK (13.6%) and NPS (14.8%) treatments, in contradiction with previous research. This may be related to the increase in the special subgroup function of Acidobacteria, which, in terms of the genus, were unclassified Subgroup 3, unclassified Subgroup 6, unclassified Subgroup 17, and uncultured Desulfovirga sp.…”

Predicting missing links in global host-parasite networks

“…We cannot find any documentation of Chaetomidium arxii infection in humans, although this genus is well known for its opportunistic animal and human pathogens ( 111 ).…”