Effects of organic materials on soil bacterial community structure in long-term continuous cropping of tomato in greenhouse.

Abstract

Long-term fertilization will affect the above-ground vegetation, but we have little understanding of soil bacterial community structure and diversity so far. This study aims to study the effect of organic fertilization on the soil bacterial community structure and diversity of protected long-term continuous tomato cropping by using high-throughput sequencing technology. Results show that (1) fertilization application (chemical fertilizer [CF] and vermicompost [VM]) significantly changed the soil physico-chemistry properties, such as soil pH decreased compared with control treatment and increased the soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and total potassium (TK) contents; (2) VM increased the Shannon index of soil bacteria but decreased the soil Chao1 index; and (3) soil Proteobacteria and Actinomycetes were dominant taxa and the relative abundance of Actinobacteria increased by 36.40–44.27 and 25.80–29.35%, with CF and VM, respectively, compared with the control. Pearson correlation analysis showed that soil pH, SOC, TN, TP, and TK were the main environmental factors that affected the diversity and richness of soil bacterial communities. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that the SOC and TN play important roles in the composition of soil bacterial communities. In summary, the effect of VM on the soil bacterial community structure of continuous tomato cropping is better than that of CF, which should be used in the sustainable production of facility tomatoes.