Soil Nutrients and Microbial Community Characteristics of Rhododendron rex in Central Yunnan Province of China

Abstract

In the present study, Rhododendron rex soil from Jiaozishan national nature reserve and Xiaobaicaoling in Yunnan province of China was selected as the research object. Physicochemical properties and high-throughput sequencing techniques were used to analyze soil nutrients and microbial diversity to explore the soil nutrients and microbial community characteristics of Rhododendron rex in central Yunnan, and provide theoretical reference for future research on ex-situ conservation, bionic cultivation and artificial propagation of Rhododendron rex. Results showed that the Rhododendron rex soil in central Yunnan was acidic, and the contents of various nutrients in the soil were high and correlated with each other. The abundance of fungi was higher than that of bacteria, while the diversity of bacteria was higher than that of fungi. There was a correlation between soil nutrients and microbial community characteristics. The dominant phyla of soil bacteria were Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria, and the sum of relative abundance was 78.97%. The dominant phyla of fungi were Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, and the sum of relative abundance was 94.89%.

Genetic variability and population divergence of Rhododendron platypodum Diels in China in the context of conservation

“…The Fis of all populations involved was negative, indicating no inbreeding. In other species of the genus, like Rhododendron longipedicellatum (Li et al, 2018), R. protistum (Zizhuo et al, 2022), R. rex (Li et al, 2022), R. dauricum (DePristo et al, 2011), and R. molle (Zhang et al, 2021), the situation was similar. This may be attributed to Rhododendron growth and breeding habits (Keller and Waller, 2002;Stoeckel et al, 2006).…”

“…He of the population samples in this study ranged from 0.35 to 0.41 (average = 0.41). Similarly, R. platypodum had a lower Ne than R. protistum (He = 0.60) (Ma et al, 2013), R. simsii (He = 0.75) (Li et al, 2022), R. ripense (He = 0.80) (Tan et al, 2009), and R. dauricum (He = 0.57) (DePristo et al, 2011). Comparative species belong to the same genus as R. platypodum.…”