Effects of partial substitution of chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal community of Mangifera indica

Abstract

Nutrient enrichment caused by fertilization would reduce the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). To explore whether partial substitution of chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer would alleviate the negative effects of nutrient enrichment on AMF, we conducted a two-year mango (Mangifera indica) field experiment to examine the effects of different fertilization regimes on AMF communities in roots and rhizospheric soils by using high-throughput sequencing. The treatments included chemical-only fertilization (control), and two kinds of organic fertilizer (commercial organic fertilizer and bio-organic fertilizer) with replacing 12% (low) and 38% (high) chemical fertilizer. The results showed that under equivalent nutrient input, partial substitution of chemical fertilizer with organic fertilizer had positive effects on the yield and quality of mango. The application of organic fertilizer could effectively increase AMF richness. AMF diversity was significantly positively correlated with some indices of fruit quality. Compared with chemical-only fertilization, high replacement ratio of organic fertilizer could significantly change root AMF community, but did not affect AMF community in the rhizospheric soil. Bio-organic fertilizer could enrich more AMF species and form a more complex AMF co-occurrence network than commercial organic fertilizer. In all, replacing chemical fertilizer with a high proportion of organic fertilizer could improve the yield and quality of mango while maintain AMF richness. The changes of AMF community caused by organic fertilizer substitution pre-ferably occurred in roots rather than soils.