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Soil type determines the abundance and community structure of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea in flooded paddy soils

  • SOILS, SEC 2 • GLOBAL CHANGE, ENVIRON RISK ASSESS, SUSTAINABLE LAND USE • RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Abstract

Purpose

Ammonia oxidation plays an important role in global nitrogen cycle. However, little information is available on ammonia oxidizers in paddy soils. This study aimed to understand the controlling factors of ammonia oxidizers in the paddy soils.

Materials and methods

Three types of paddy soils were collected from southwest [Chongqing City (CQ)], central [Honghu City (HH)], and northeast [Panjin City (PJ)] of China, respectively. The soils were cultured with unplanted and rice-planted pot experiments for 10 weeks. The abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) of the paddy soil samples were investigated by real-time polymerase chain reaction and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis approaches based on amoA genes.

Results and discussion

In this study, minor changes in the abundance and community structure of both AOB and AOA were observed among the treatments of unplanted and rhizosphere and bulk of rice-planted soil samples in the same type of paddy soil. The AOB population sizes in CQ were lower than those in HH and PJ, while the AOA in CQ and HH were lower than those in PJ. The amoA gene copy numbers of AOA were more abundant than those of AOB in all treatments of the three paddy soils. The community structure of both AOB and AOA in all paddy soils was different from each other.

Conclusions

The population size and community structure of AOB and AOA in the flooded paddy soils were mainly determined by the soil types, irrespective of rice-planted or unplanted.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2005CB121105) and the Natural Science Foundation of China (40871129, 50921064).

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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, People’s Republic of China

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

  2. Graduate University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Xin Chen

  3. Environmental Futures Centre and School of Biomolecular and Physical Sciences, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, 4111, Australia

    Zhihong Xu

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  1. Xin Chen
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  2. Li-Mei Zhang
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  3. Ju-Pei Shen
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  5. Ji-Zheng He
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Correspondence to Ji-Zheng He.

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Responsible editor: Hailong Wang

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Chen, X., Zhang, LM., Shen, JP. et al. Soil type determines the abundance and community structure of ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea in flooded paddy soils. J Soils Sediments 10, 1510–1516 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-010-0256-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-010-0256-9

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