Abstract
PurposeAlthough soil fungal communities are considered important in tea orchard ecosystems, experimental research on their responses to the long-term continuous ratooning cultivation of tea plants are limited.MethodsIn this study, Illumina high-throughput sequencing technology was employed to investigate soil fungal communities in tea orchards with continuous cropping histories of 0, 1, 10, and 20 years.ResultsResults indicated that the predominant phyla were Ascomycota and Basidiomycota in all tea soil samples. Plant pathogen fungi Alternaria was the most predominant genus in the 10- and 20-year soils and significantly higher than that in the 0- and 1-year soils. FUNGuild revealed that the symbiotrophs in the 1-year soil (8.00%) was markedly higher than those in the 0-, 10-, and 20-year soils (1.43%~2.47%). The saprotrophs in the 20-year soils was approximately two-fold higher than those identified in the 0-, 1-, and 10-year soils. The pathotroph–saprotroph–symbiotroph fungi were higher in the 10- and 20-year soils in comparison to the 0- and 1-year soils as expected. Diversity analysis showed that the indices of Shannon and Simpson in the 1-year soils were higher than those in other treatments. Redundancy analysis suggested that fungal community structure and function were evidently interrelated to pH and exchangeable aluminum in the soils, respectively.ConclusionIn summary, the long-term continuous ratooning cultivation of tea plants changed the fungal communities in the rhizosphere, enriched saprotrophs and plant pathogens (Alternaria spp.), and reduced beneficial fungi (symbiotrophs). Results of this work can be used to explore reasonable management measures, such as microbial fertilizer application, and eventually relieve the long-term monoculture problems of tea plants.
Highlights
Tea (Camellia sinensis L.), as a major economically valuable crop in China, its plantation area increased to 2.74 million ha in 2014, approximately accounting for 74.8% of the world (FAO 2014)
Soil degradation and yield decline frequently occur after long-term continuous ratoon cropping of tea plants, an event regarded as a continuous cropping obstacle
Wang (2014) found that the abundance of bacteria and fungi obviously decreased with the increase in continuous cropping years of tea plants; Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, and Ascomycota were more predominant in younger tea orchard soils, whereas Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes were less abundant in the older ones
Summary
Tea (Camellia sinensis L.), as a major economically valuable crop in China, its plantation area increased to 2.74 million ha in 2014, approximately accounting for 74.8% of the world (FAO 2014). Previous studies have investigated the shifts of soil microbial communities in the tea continuous cropping system. Some researchers revealed (2020) 70:7 that long-term tea continuous cropping changed the bacterial community structure, reduced microbial diversity, and caused the decrease in potentially beneficial plant-associated bacteria in continuous cropping soils (Zhao et al 2012; Li et al 2016). We hypothesized that tea continuous ratoon cropping can generate the alterations in a soil fungal community. This alteration would be regulated by the soil physiochemical properties, which could cause negative effects on tea growth and yield
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