Impact of Phosphate Solubilizing Bacterial Agent on Cadmium Bioavailability and Microbial Communities in Soil and Cd Accumulation in Lettuce Plants

Abstract

Cadmium (Cd) contamination in soil can lead to food chain accumulation and greatly impacts on human health. Bioremediation has gained more and more attention due to its environment-friendly, high efficiency and low-cost. In this work, we studied the impact of phosphate solubilizing bacterial agent (PSBA) on Cd bioavailability, microbial communities in soil and Cd accumulation in lettuce plants with pot experiment and field trial. Results of pot experiment showed that PSBA could decrease the bioavailability of Cd (Cd-acid extractable from 3.30 to 2.34 mg/kg, Cd-reducible from 1.94 to 1.56 mg/kg), promote lettuce plants growth (increased by 33.85% height and by 33.65% fresh weight) and reduce the accumulation of Cd (from 5.85 to 3.73 mg/kg) in lettuce plants. High-throughput sequencing identified that PSBA could change the composition and structure of the soil microbial communities. The relative abundances of the three ecologically beneficial bacterial families of Pseudomonadaceae, Burkholderiaceae, and Enterobacteriaceae increased from 2.29% to 5.13%, 0.56% to 5.24%, and 1.87% to 16.93%, respectively. And the former two were positively correlated with redox potential (Eh) (R² = 0.474, p < 0.05, R² = 0.590, p < 0.01, respectively). The bacterial networks were more complex in PSBA treatment, reflecting through more links (from 1 893 to 2 185) and a higher average degree (from 38.242 to 45.052) and density (from 0.390 to 0.469). Results of field trial demonstrated that PSBA could also decrease Cd content in lettuce plants and microbial composition in soil. This study indicated that PSBA could be served as an alternative material in bioremediation of Cd contamination in soil.

Keywords

Cd bioavailability / microbial communities / physicochemical properties / PSBA / environment geology

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