Abstract
Fertilizer application has contributed substantially to increasing crop yield. Despite the important role of soil fungi in agricultural production, we still have limited understanding of the complex responses of fungal taxonomic and functional groups to organic and mineral fertilization in long term. Here we report the responses of the fungal communities in an alkaline soil to 30-year application of mineral fertilizer (NP), organic manure (M) and combined fertilizer (NPM) by the Illumina HiSeq sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR to target fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) genes. The results show: (1) compared to the unfertilized soil, fertilizer application increased fungal diversity and ITS gene copy numbers, and shifted fungal community structure. Such changes were more pronounced in the M and NPM soils than in the NP soil (except for fungal diversity), which can be largely attributed to the manure induced greater increases in soil total organic C, total N and available P. (2) Compared to the unfertilized soil, the NP and NPM soils reduced the proportion of saprotrophs by 40%, the predominant taxa of which may potentially affect cellulose decomposition. (3) Indicator species analysis suggested that the indicator operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in the M soil occupied 25.6% of its total community, but that only accounted for 0.9% in the NP soil. Our findings suggest that fertilization-induced changes of total fungal community were more responsive to organic manure than mineral fertilizer. The reduced proportion of cellulose decomposition-related saprotrophs in mineral fertilizer treatments may potentially contribute to increasing their soil C stocks.
Highlights
Fertilization has contributed substantially to increasing crop yield (Zhang et al, 2012)
While soil pH in acidic and neutral soils is very susceptible to N application and in turn affects fungal community composition (Zhang et al, 2016) and decreases fungal diversity (Zhou et al, 2016), soil pH in alkaline soil is less affected by N fertilization due to its higher pH buffering capacity (Guo et al, 2010)
All measured soil parameters except pH were significantly affected by 30-year fertilizer applications (Table 1)
Summary
Fertilization has contributed substantially to increasing crop yield (Zhang et al, 2012). Organic amendments have been reported to increase soil nutrient status and organic C content (Jian et al, 2016), but the response of fungal communities and functional groups to manure application has not been thoroughly studied (Francioli et al, 2016). This calls for a systematic investigation on the possible impacts of mineral fertilizer and organic manure treatments on soil fungal community structure and functional population dynamics in alkaline soils
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