Soil amendment strategies determining microbial community composition and their assembly processes in a continuously cropped soil

Highlights

● Phyla Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated in the rhizosphere of tomatoes under RSD amendment.

● Stochastic processes dominated in bacterial community assembly for biochar and CF amendments.

● It is important to monitor and manage soil conditions before planting after RSD amendment.

Abstract

Reductive soil disinfestation (RSD) is an important tool for sustainable agricultural productivity. However, the differences in soil bacterial communities and their community assembly processes among RSD and other treatment strategies (e.g., biochar and chemical fumigation) are still subject to open questions. In this study, soils subjected to various treatments–un-treated control (CK), chemical soil fumigation with CaCN₂ (CF), 1% biochar (1%B), 3% biochar (3%B), and reductive soil disinfestation (RSD) are investigated. Soil samples were collected, incubated, and then used for growth of tomato plants. The Sloan neutral community model indicates that stochastic processes dominate in bacterial community assembly for both biochar and CF amendments. In contrast, this work shows that RSD treatment can have a strong impact on soil bacterial community composition. The relative abundance of Firmicutes increased during unplanted soil incubation, whereas Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes dominated in the rhizosphere after planting of tomatoes. Normalized stochasticity ratio reveals that deterministic selection played an important role in the bacterial assembly under RSD amendment. We found that RSD amendment yielded lower biomass than that for other treatments after 28 days of tomato growth. Our results suggest that although RSD treatment has great potential to rebuild soil bacterial ecology by shaping bacterial communities and their assembly processes, it is important to monitor and manage soil conditions (e.g., soil nutrients or physical properties) before planting to ensure plant productivity.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

amendment strategy / reductive soil disinfestation / bacterial community / assembly processes

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42167017), Talents of Guizhou Science and Technology Cooperation Platform ([2017]5726-52), Guizhou Province 100-level Talent Project ([2020]6010), the Key Program of Science and Technology of Guizhou Province ([2020]1Z036), and Ningbo Municipal Science and Technology Bureau ([2021]Z047).

Authors’ contribution

YL, HL and CZ conceived the experiment. JL and YL finished incubation and analyzed samples to collect data, analyzed and visualized data. HL and YL wrote the draft. YL reviewed the manuscript and all the authors made significant contributions in result presentation. YL and CZ provided funding, project administration and supervision.

Data availability

Main data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this manuscript and supplementary material. Extra data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Electronic supplementary material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42832-023-0219-x and is accessible for authorized users.

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