Community Structure of Ammonia Oxidizing Bacteria and Their Potential to Produce Nitrous Oxide and Carbon Dioxide in Acid Tea Soils

Abstract

The potentials of nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) production in acid tea soils from Indonesia and Japan were investigated in a laboratory incubation experiment, and the community structures of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria in these soils were characterized using PCR-DGGE approaches. The soils used were sampled from tea plantations in Shizuoka, Japan and in Bogor and Malino, Indonesia. All of the soils were acidic (pH 3.45 to 4.00). The N 2 O and CO 2 production in Shizuoka was almost 5 times higher than in Bogor and Malino. All of the amoA gene sequences defined belong to the genus Nitrosospira sp. with cluster 2 and cluster 3a.