Abstract
Soil sickness is the progressive loss of soil quality due to continuous monocropping. The bacterial populations are critical to sustaining agroecosystems, but their responses to long-term peanut monocropping have not been determined. In this study, based on a previously constructed gradient of continuous monocropped plots, we tracked the detailed feedback responses of soil bacteria to short- and long-term continuous monocropping of four different peanut varieties using high-throughput sequencing techniques. The analyses showed that soil samples from 1- and 2-year monocropped plots were grouped into one class, and samples from the 11- and 12-year plots were grouped into another. Long-term consecutive monocropping could lead to a general loss in bacterial diversity and remarkable changes in bacterial abundance and composition. At the genera level, the dominant genus Bacillus changed in average abundance from 1.49% in short-term monocropping libraries to 2.96% in the long-term libraries. The dominant species Bacillus aryabhattai and Bacillus funiculus and the relatively abundant species Bacillus luciferensis and Bacillus decolorationis all showed increased abundance with long-term monocropping. Additionally, several other taxa at the genus and species level also presented increased abundance with long-term peanut monocropping; however, several taxa showed decreased abundance. Comparing analyses of predicted bacterial community functions showed significant changes at different KEGG pathway levels with long-term peanut monocropping. Combined with our previous study, this study indicated that bacterial communities were obviously influenced by the monocropping period, but less influenced by peanut variety and growth stage. Some bacterial taxa with increased abundance have functions of promoting plant growth or degrading potential soil allelochemicals, and should be closely related with soil remediation and may have potential application to relieve peanut soil sickness. A decrease in diversity and abundance of bacterial communities, especially beneficial communities, and simplification of bacterial community function with long-term peanut monocropping could be the main cause of peanut soil sickness.
Highlights
Soil sickness is the progressive loss of soil quality due to continuous monocropping and results in the reduction of crop yield and quality, as well as a prevalence of soil-borne diseases (Huang et al, 2013; Van der Putten et al, 2013)
This study aims to investigate bacterial community dynamics succession under long-term peanut monocropping based on monocropping gradient experiment plots with a consistent background
The aims of this study were to (i) determine the change characteristics of the soil bacterial community and the influences of peanut varieties on the dynamics of the bacterial community, under long-term continuous monocropping of peanut, and (ii) identify the key bacteria taxa related to peanut soil sickness
Summary
Soil sickness is the progressive loss of soil quality due to continuous monocropping and results in the reduction of crop yield and quality, as well as a prevalence of soil-borne diseases (Huang et al, 2013; Van der Putten et al, 2013) It is a major problem in agriculture ecosystems all over the world, and has been reported for many types of crops, including food (e.g., rice, wheat, corn, soybean, and peanut), economic (e.g., sugarcane and tobacco), vegetable (e.g., cucumber and eggplant), and medicinal crops (e.g., Rehmannia, ginseng, and Angelica) (Liu et al, 2012; Gentry, Ruffo & Below, 2013; Huang et al, 2013; Wu et al, 2015). Understanding how soil microbial communities are affected by continuous monocropping is necessary to provide insights into soil sickness
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