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Abundance and community structure of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria in an acid paddy soil

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Abstract

Nitrification is essential to the nitrogen cycle in paddy soils. However, it is still not clear which group of ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms plays more important roles in nitrification in the paddy soils. The changes in the abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) were investigated by real-time PCR, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, and clone library approaches in an acid red paddy soil subjected to long-term fertilization treatments, including treatment without fertilizers (CT); chemical fertilizer nitrogen (N); N and potassium (NK); N and phosphorus (NP); N, P, and K (NPK); and NPK plus recycled crop residues (NPK+C). The AOA population size in NPK+C was higher than those in CT, while minor changes in AOB population sizes were detected among the treatments. There were also some changes in AOA community composition responding to different fertilization treatments. Still few differences were detected in AOB community composition among the treatments. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the AOA sequences fell into two main clusters: cluster A and cluster soil/sediment. The AOB composition in this paddy soil was dominated by Nitrosospira cluster 12. These results suggested that the AOA were more sensitive than AOB to different fertilization treatments in the acid red paddy soil.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (41090281, 50921064, 41025004) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-YW-G-072, International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams of “Ecosystem Processes and Services”).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, China

    Xin Chen, Li-Mei Zhang, Ju-Pei Shen & Ji-Zheng He

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

    Xin Chen

  3. Key Laboratory of Agro-ecological Processes in Subtropical Region, Institute of Subtropical Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changsha, 410125, China

    Wen-Xue Wei

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  1. Xin Chen
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  2. Li-Mei Zhang
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Correspondence to Ji-Zheng He.

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Chen, X., Zhang, LM., Shen, JP. et al. Abundance and community structure of ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria in an acid paddy soil. Biol Fertil Soils 47, 323–331 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-011-0542-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00374-011-0542-8

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