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Long-term manure addition reduces diversity and changes community structure of diazotrophs in a neutral black soil of northeast China

  • Soils, Sec 5 • Soil and Landscape Ecology • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Although biological nitrogen fixation is an important nitrogen source for agroecosystem, the knowledge of their response to long-term fertilization under neutral soil is limited. The aims of this study were to explore the effects of different fertilization treatments on diversity and compositions of diazotrophic community in a neutral black soil in northeast China.

Materials and methods

The long-term fertilization experiment under monoculture maize was established in a neutral black soil since 1979. Soil samples from four treatments were collected in September 2014: non-fertilization (NoF), chemical fertilization (CF), manure fertilization (M), and chemical fertilization plus manure (CFM). qPCR and Illumina MiSeq sequencing were used to assess the abundance and compositions of diazotrophic community targeting nifH gene.

Results and discussion

M treatment significantly increased the nifH gene abundance, but inverse trends were found in the CF and CFM treatments when compared with NoF. The diazotrophic community was overwhelmingly dominated by Alphaproteobacteria with relative higher abundance in manure-added treatments. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) indicated that the total diazotrophic community was separated into two groups with and without manure addition, and soil available P was the most influential factor on the changes of diazotrophic community.

Conclusions

Our results suggested that soil nutrients rather than soil pH were the main influential factors on the changes of diazotrophic communities and manure addition had a greater effect than chemical fertilization on diazotrophic community structure in neutral black soil.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB15010103) and National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0200604).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harbin, 150081, China

    Xiaojing Hu, Junjie Liu, Jian Jin, Xiaobing Liu & Guanghua Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xiaojing Hu

  3. Institute of Agricultural Resource and Environment, Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Changchun, 130033, China

    Ping Zhu

  4. Institute of Soil and Fertilizer and Environment Resources, Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Harbin, 150086, China

    Dan Wei

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  1. Xiaojing Hu
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  2. Junjie Liu
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  3. Ping Zhu
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  4. Dan Wei
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  5. Jian Jin
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  6. Xiaobing Liu
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  7. Guanghua Wang
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Correspondence to Guanghua Wang.

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Responsible editor: Jizheng He

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ESM 1

Fig. S1. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) of diazotrophic community composition associated with soil properties following long-term fertilization treatments in neutral black soil of northeast China. NoF, non-fertilization; CF, chemical fertilization, M, manure fertilization; CFM, chemical fertilization plus manure. (PDF 597 kb)

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Hu, X., Liu, J., Zhu, P. et al. Long-term manure addition reduces diversity and changes community structure of diazotrophs in a neutral black soil of northeast China. J Soils Sediments 18, 2053–2062 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-018-1975-6

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