Microbial Community Succession and Response to Environmental Variables During Cow Manure and Corn Straw Composting

Abstract

In composting system, the composition of microbial communities is determined by the constant change in the physicochemical parameters. This study explored the dynamics of bacterial and fungal communities during cow manure and corn straw composting using high throughput sequencing technology. The relationships between physicochemical parameters and microbial community composition and abundance were also evaluated. The sequencing results revealed the major phyla included Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Chloroflexi and Actinobacteria, Ascomycota, and Basidiomycota. Linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) illustrated that Actinomycetales and Sordariomycetes were the indicators of bacteria and fungi in the maturation phase, respectively. Mantel test showed that NO3--N, NH4+-N, TN, C/N, temperature and moisture content significantly influenced bacterial community composition while only TN and moisture content had a significant effect on fungal community structure. Structural equation model (SEM) indicated that TN, NH4+-N, NO3--N and pH had a significant effect on fungal abundance while TN and temperature significantly affected bacterial abundance. Our finding increases the understanding of microbial community succession in cow manure and corn straw composting under natural conditions.

Microbial Community and Its Association With Physicochemical Factors During Compost Bedding for Dairy Cows

“…was found to significantly correlate with the distribution of bacterial and fungal communities. This result was consistent with the report by Hu et al (2017) and Meng et al (2019). TOC is an essential nutrient for microbial growth and has been reported as an important factor affecting microbial community structure and metabolic type (Hu et al, 2017).…”

“…This correlated with the nature and nutritional status of the CB system during the padding phases, thus suggesting bacterial species to be rolespecific and environment-sensitive. This result agrees with the previous studies by Ren et al (2016) and Meng et al (2019) who had reported similarity of bacterial diversity at both cooling and maturation stages during cow manure and corn/rice straw composting. CB, padded for 9 and 20 days, indicated the sharing of a high similarity of fungal community compositions.…”

“…Interestingly, TN significantly influenced the abundance and community composition of bacteria and fungi, which indicated that both bacteria and fungi played key roles in the transformation of nitrogen in composting. Therefore, rates of nutrient transformation and compost maturation are processes mainly sponsored by activities of microorganisms (Meng et al, 2019). Significant correlations of TN with the relative abundance of different phyla such as Synergistetes, Neocallimastigomycota (all P < 0.05), and microbial alpha diversity were seen.…”

“…For fungi, a high concentration of Ascomycota often indicates severe decomposition. Ascomycota have been reported in composting of cow manure, food and garden waste, and sewage sludge (Langarica-Fuentes et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2018;Meng et al, 2019). Ascomycota can secrete many kinds of cellulose-and hemicellulose-degrading enzymes, which can efficiently utilize nutrient elements in compost.…”

“…The advent of high throughput sequencing has widened the possibility of detecting sequences of previously unknown microorganisms. Therefore, the dynamics of microbial communities in various composting systems has been studied, such as in cow manure and straw (Meng et al, 2019), poultry manure (Awasthi et al, 2018), and in vegetable waste (Liu et al, 2018). However, studies investigating the dynamics of microbial population in CB is lacking, especially for fungi.…”