Effects of different fertilization practices on anammox activity, abundance, and community compositions in a paddy soil

Highlights

1. Anammox responded to different fertilization practices.

2. Organic residues treated soils contributed lower (4.07–4.95%) N loss than solely chemical fertilizer (9.13%) in terms of anammox.

3. Incorporation of organic residues increased the abundance of anammox bacteria but decreased the activity.

4. The anammox activity was not related to functional gene abundance and soil physicochemical properties.

Abstract

The return of crop residue and green manure into agricultural soil is known to be important agricultural management strategies, yet how they affect the anammox process remains poorly characterized. A field experiment containing four treatments: chemical fertilizer (F), F plus rice straw (FS), FS plus green manure (FSM), FSM with integrated management (FSMM), was performed to examine the effects of incorporation of rice straw and green manure residues on anammox. The results showed that the anammox activities in FS and FSM treatments (0.65 and 0.80 nmol N g⁻¹ soil h⁻¹, respectively) were significantly lower than those in F and FSMM treatments (1.60 and 1.28 nmol N g⁻¹ soil h⁻¹, respectively). Anammox contributed 4.07%-4.95% of total N loss in soil incorporated with residues, lower than soil treated with chemical fertilizer only (9.13%), the remaining being due to denitrification. However, the abundance of the hzsB gene (the hydrazine synthase β-subunit gene) in FS and FSM treatments (1.13 × 10⁶ and 1.18 × 10⁶ copies g⁻¹ soil) were significantly higher than soil using chemical fertilizer only (7.49 × 10⁵ copies g⁻¹ soil) while showed no significant difference with FSMM treatment (8.81 × 10⁵ copies g⁻¹ soil). Illumina sequencing indicated that Brocadia was the dominant anammox genus, following by Scalindua and Kuenenia. Anammox bacterial diversity was altered after 4-year incorporation of rice straw and green manure, as shown by α-diversity indices. We concluded that rice straw and green manure incorporated with mineral fertilizer reduce N removal from paddy soil in terms of anammox in spite of stimulating anammox bacterial growth.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Anammox / Rice straw / Green manure / Scalindua / N loss

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by Joint Regional Innovation and Development Fund (UI9A2048), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFD0300901, 2016YFD0300906), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (2019JJ50338). The author San’an Nie greatly thanks the National Natural Science Foundation of China (4170010194), as well as Dr. Dan Xi and Miss Yi Wang, for their kindly help in the stable isotope experiment.

Declaration of interests

The authors declare no known conflict of interest.

Author contributions

Authorship statement: San’an Nie and Hua Wang designed the work. Geng Sun and Mei Sun carried out the ¹⁵N-isotope experiment, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript with support from all authors. Zunchang Luo, Chao Li, and Xiaoping Xiao were involved in planting and supervised the study. Xiaojing Li and Junjie Zhong participated in soil sampling and soil physicochemical analysis. All authors provided critical feedback and helped shape the research.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-021-0103-5 and is accessible for authorized users.

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