Abstract
Introduction of cover crops may improve the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in roots and soil under crop rotational systems; therefore, it is necessary to determine the potential for AMF communities to improve sustainable food production. We investigated the impact of cover crops, including wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), pea (Pisum sativum L.), and hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth.), on the AMF communities in their roots in autumn and spring sowing seasons with PCR-DGGE analysis. Although all four cover crops impacted the AMF community structure in roots, the diversity of AMF communities was unchanged among crop type or sowing season. Redundancy analysis (RDA) demonstrated that AMF communities within crop type were significantly different. However, the AMF community structures were not influenced by growing season, suggesting that growth stage in crops may be more responsive to shaping AMF community structure in crop roots than host crop identity.
Highlights
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are widespread in most terrestrial ecosystems where they form mutualistic associations with the majority of plants to facilitate nutrient uptake from the soil via an extensive extraradical mycelium [1]
The innovative aspects of the present study focused on using molecular techniques to determine AMF community structure to assess the impacts of host species and sowing season
To investigate the impact of host crop identity or sowing season on AMF community structure, 1/2000a Wagner pots were prepared with three replicates and mix-cropped with pea (Pisum sativum L., cv: Akabanakinusaya), hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth., cv: Mamesuke), wheat (Triticum aestivum L., cv: Bandowase), and barley (Hordeum vulgare L., cv: Ichibanboshi)
Summary
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are widespread in most terrestrial ecosystems where they form mutualistic associations with the majority of plants to facilitate nutrient uptake from the soil via an extensive extraradical mycelium [1]. This symbiotic relationship is present in most agricultural crops, with benefits of increased plant productivity [2], improved soil structure [3] and increased pathogen resistance [4]. AMF abundance or diversity is important to overall plant productivity and stability of terrestrial ecosystems [7]. Because of their importance in terrestrial ecosystems, AMF communities have been extensively studied both in natural [8][10] and agricultural settings [11]-[13]
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