Abstract
BackgroundChanges of soil microbial communities are one of the main factors of continuous cropping problem. Andrographis paniculata has been reported to have replant problem in cultivation. However, little is known about the variations of rhizosphere soil microbial communities of A. paniculata under a continuous cropping system. Here, Illumina MiSeq was used to investigate the shifts of rhizospheric bacterial and fungal communities after continuous cropping of A. paniculata.ResultsThe bacterial diversity increased whereas the fungal diversity decreased in rhizosphere soil after consecutive A. paniculata monoculture; and the soil microbial community structure differed between newly plant soil and continuous cropped soil. Taxonomic analyses further revealed that the bacterial phyla Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria and Bacteroidetes and the fungal phyla Zygomycota, Ascomycota and Cercozoa were the dominant phyla across all soil samples. The relative abundance of phyla Acidobacteria and Zygomycota were significantly increased after continuous cropping. Additionally, the most abundant bacterial genus Pseudolabrys significantly decreased, while the predominant fungal genus Mortierella increased considerably in abundance after continuous cropping.ConclusionsOur results revealed the changes on diversity and composition of bacterial and fungal communities in rhizospheric soil under continuous cropping of A. paniculata. These data contributed to the understanding of soil micro-ecological environments in the rhizosphere of A. paniculata.
Highlights
Changes of soil microbial communities are one of the main factors of continuous cropping problem
Overall results of high‐throughput sequencing High-throughput sequencing of soil samples resulted in a total of 375,463 high-quality sequences for bacteria from the six soil samples with the effectiveness above 82% for all samples
Sequences across all samples were clustered into 2123 Operational taxonomic unit (OTU)
Summary
Changes of soil microbial communities are one of the main factors of continuous cropping problem. Continuous cropping is the practice of cultivating the same crop in soil that had previously supported the same plant year after year without rotation with other crops (Shipton 1977), which sometimes leads to yield reduction, quality deterioration, poor growth status and disease aggravation (Zhou et al 2011; Liu et al 2014) It is frequently observed in medicinal plants such as Panax. Soil bacteria and fungi both directly and indirectly affect the health of plants, and plants roots exert strong influences on rhizospheric soil microorganisms through producing exudates as well as secondary metabolites (Haldar and Sengupta 2015). These interactions participate in plants’ fitting the natural environments including the continuous cropping system. Revealing the diversity and composition of microbial community in continuously cropped soil may help better understanding continuous cropping in medicinal plants
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