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Impact of irrigation water quality on soil nitrifying and total bacterial communities

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Abstract

Disturbance induced by two contrasting irrigation regimes (groundwater versus urban wastewater) was evaluated on a sandy agricultural soil through chemical and microbial analyses. Contrary to wastewater, groundwater displayed very high nitrate contents but small amounts of ammonium and organic matter. Despite these strong compositional shifts, soil organic carbon and nitrogen, nitrate and ammonium contents were not significantly different in both types of irrigated plot. Moreover, neither microbial biomass nor its activity, determined as fluorescein diacetate hydrolysis activity, was influenced by irrigation regimes. Bacterial community structure, assessed by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of 16S ribosomal DNA fragments, was also weakly impacted as molecular fingerprints shared an overall similarity of 85%. Ammonia-oxidizing bacterial community (AOB) was monitored by DGGE of the functional molecular marker amoA gene (alpha subunit of the ammonia monooxygenase). Surprisingly, no amoA signals were obtained from plots irrigated with groundwater, whereas signal intensities were high in all plots under wastewater. Among the last, compositional shifts of the AOB community were weak. Overall, impact of irrigation water quality on soil chemistry could not be evidenced, whereas effects were low on the total bacterial compartment but marked on the AOB community.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the IRD-Département Soutien Formation. Chemical analyses were performed by iso 9001 LAMA Laboratory (Dakar, US Imago, IRD). The authors thank L. Dieng for useful technical advice about the DGGE fingerprinting method, P. Diagne at the head of PROVANIA (association of peri-urban farmers in Dakar), as well as all farmers implied in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Sénégalais de Recherche Agricole, Laboratoire National de Recherche sur les Productions Végétales, BP 3120, Dakar, Sénégal

    Ndèye Yacine Badiane Ndour & Mamadou Khouma

  2. IRD-Seqbio, LEMSAT, BP 1386, Dakar, Sénégal

    Ndèye Yacine Badiane Ndour, Ezékiel Baudoin, Aliou Guissé & Mountakha Seck

  3. Département de Biologie Végétale, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, BP 5005, Dakar, Sénégal

    Aliou Guissé & Mountakha Seck

  4. IRD-Seqbio, Montpellier SupAgro, bât. 12, 2 place Viala, 34060, Montpellier cedex 1, France

    Ezékiel Baudoin & Alain Brauman

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  1. Ndèye Yacine Badiane Ndour
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  2. Ezékiel Baudoin
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  3. Aliou Guissé
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Correspondence to Ezékiel Baudoin.

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Ndour, N.Y.B., Baudoin, E., Guissé, A. et al. Impact of irrigation water quality on soil nitrifying and total bacterial communities. Biol Fertil Soils 44, 797–803 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-008-0285-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-008-0285-3

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