Effect of long-term continuous cropping of strawberry on soil bacterial community structure and diversity

Abstract

Long-term monoculture leads to continuous cropping (CC) problems, which complicate agricultural production, both locally and abroad. This study contrasted the different bacterial community compositions, physicochemical properties and enzyme activities of strawberry soil subjected to CC, CC rhizosphere (CCR), non-CC (NCC) and non-CC rhizosphere (NCCR) treatments. The soil physicochemical properties and enzyme activities were significantly reduced after long-term CC. In addition, five variation trends were observed for the 11 major bacterial genera in the soil. Sphingomonas was the only stable group among all treatments. The proportions of Novosphingobium, Rhodoplanes, Povalibacter, Cellvibrio and Stenotrophobacter decreased after CC. The relative abundances of Pelagibius, Thioprofundum and Allokutzneria increased only in the CC treatment. Nitrospira were more abundant in rhizosphere soil than in non-rhizosphere soil. The relative abundance of Bacillus increased after CC. Redundancy analysis revealed that Bacillus, Pelagibius and Allokutzneria had significant negative correlations with the soil physicochemical properties and enzyme activities. Therefore, these genera may be the key bacteria influenced by the physicochemical properties and enzyme activities altered by replanting. These results indicate that long-term CC of strawberry leads to less favourable rhizosphere soil conditions, which can be understood as a stress-induced response of the bacterial community diversity. Further research is needed to determine how the quality of soil is reduced by the shift in the diversity of the soil bacterial community.