Effects of heavy metals on bacterial community structure in the rhizosphere of Salsola collina and bulk soil in the Jinchuan mining area

Abstract

It is important to understand the changes in microbial properties of plant rhizospheres to elucidate the interaction between heavy metals and plant communities. In this study, high throughput sequencing method was used to analyze the effects of heavy metals on rhizosphere microbial community structure of the autochthonous plant Salsola collina in the Jinchuan mining area. The operational taxonomic units (OTU) number and species diversity, and richness of the bacterial community in the rhizosphere of Salsola collina were higher than those of the bulk soil. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes were the major bacterial phyla, and Salsola collina, Kaistobacter, Citrobacter, Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas were the main genera. Principal component analysis (PCA) and unweighted pair group method using arithmetic average (UPGMA) cluster analysis showed that there were significant differences in bacterial community structure between site and between rhizosphere and bulk soil. The moisture content, total nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, nickel, chromium, lead, and zinc contents, and pH had significant effects on species richness of the bacterial community, with total phosphorus content having a significant effect on species diversity. The finding of this study could be used as an important guideline for bioremediation of heavy metals in mining area.

Keywords:

• Arid and mining area
• autochthonous plant
• Salsola collina
• rhizosphere
• bacterial community structure

Disclosure statement

All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31860176, 31670404, 41977204 and 31700059], Key research and development program of Gansu province [20YF3FA037] and Key research and development program of Shaanxi province [2020ZDLSF06-06, 20NYYF0013], and XAWLKYTD 012. We are grateful to all anonymous reviewers whose comments improved the quality of the manuscript.