Fungal community composition in sodic soils subjected to long-term rice cultivation

ABSTRACT

Rice cultivation is widely used to improve saline-sodic soils in Northeast China. However, the chronological effect of rice cultivation on soil fungal communities has not been studied. Therefore, this study investigated the variation of soil fungal communities in different rice cultivation years. Compared with the blank area, the rice cultivation for 20 years significantly decreased the pH and electrical conductivity by 16.6% and 70.1%, while significantly increased the soil organic carbon and available phosphorus by 90.6% and 17.4 times, respectively. Meanwhile, the relative abundance of Ascomycota and Basidiomycota significantly decreased and increased after rice cultivation, respectively. Moreover, some genera of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), e.g. Corymbiglomus, Glomus, and Rhizophagus, and pathogenic fungi (Thanatephorus cucumeris) disappeared, while Dentiscutata (one genus of AMF) appeared after rice cultivation. In addition, the fungal richness significantly increased when the rice cultivation less than 15 years and the fungal communities were similar between 15 and 20 years. Our findings showed that rice cultivation improved the nutrient availability and reduced salinity-alkalinity stress of sodic soils. After the rice cultivation for 15 years, the soil fungal community tended to be stable.

KEYWORDS:

• Rice cultivation years
• fungal diversity
• beneficial fungi
• harmful fungi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was financially supported by the Special Foundation for State Major Basic Research Program of China (2016YFC0501202), Special Foundation for Basic Research Program in Soil of CAS (XDB15030103 and XDA23070501), Key Research Program of CAS (KFZD-SW-112-05-04), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41571255, 41701332 and 41807049), Science and Technology Development Project of Changchun City of China (18DY019), 135 Project of Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology (Y6H2043001), and Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Development Project of China (20180519002JH, 20180520048JH, and 20190303070SF).