Mobilization of soil phosphorus and enhancement of canola yield and phosphorus uptake by Ceriporia lacerata HG2011

ABSTRACT

The high-quality phosphorus (P) rocks on the Earth will be depleted within the next 50 years. P-mobilizing microbes can mobilize soil unavailable P and reduce P fertilizer use in agriculture. Therefore, incubation and field experiments were conducted to study the effects of a new white-rot fungus Ceriporia lacerata HG2011 on soil P mobilization and canola yield and P uptake to understand the potential of this fungus as a biofertilizer. In the soil incubation experiment, available P and phosphatase activity increased, whereas soil pH decreased as the fungal hyphae grew on the soil surfaces and in the soil. Accordingly, Olsen P was positively correlated with the phosphatase activity (r = 0.565, p ≤ 0.01) but negatively with the pH (r = −0.506, p ≤ 0.01 or 0.05). The mechanisms of P mobilization by this fungus could thus be soil acidification to solubilize inorganic P and phosphatase efflux to mineralize organic P. Compared with chemical fertilizers alone, the application of this fungus in combination with chemical fertilizers increased canola yield by 3.94–9.49% in the field. Our findings firstly demonstrated the new use of C. lacerata HG2011 as a biofertilizer in canola cultivation.

KEYWORDS:

• Ceriporia lacerata
• phosphorus
• mobilization
• crop yield

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chongqing Science and Technology Commission [Projects cstc2017shms-xdny80084 and cstc2018jscx-mszdX0011].