Response of Fungal Diversity, Community Composition, and Functions to Nutrients Management in Red Soil

Abstract

Soil fungi play a critical role in plant performance and soil nutrient cycling. However, the understanding of soil fungal community composition and functions in response to different nutrients management practices in red soils remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the responses of soil fungal communities and functions under conventional farmer fertilization practice (FFP) and different nutrient management practices, i.e., optimization of NPK fertilizer (O) with soil conditioner (O + C), with lime and mushroom residue (O + L + M), and with lime and magnesium fertilizer (O + L + Mg). Illumina high-throughput sequencing was used for fungal identification, while the functional groups were inferred with FUNGuild. Nutrient management practices significantly raised the soil pH to 4.79–5.31 compared with FFP (3.69), and soil pH had the most significant effect (0.989 ***) on fungal communities. Predominant phyla, including Ascomycota, Basidiomycota, and Mortierellomycota were identified in all treatments and accounted for 94% of all fungal communities. The alpha diversity indices significantly increased under nutrients management practices compared with FFP. Co-occurrence network analysis revealed the keystone fungal species in the red soil, i.e., Ascomycota (54.04%), Basidiomycota (7.58%), Rozellomycota (4.55%), and Chytridiomycota (4.04%). FUNGuild showed that the relative abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and ectomycorrhizal fungi was higher, while pathogenic fungi were lower under nutrient management practices compared with FFP. Our findings have important implications for the understanding of improvement of acidic soils that could significantly improve the soil fungal diversity and functioning in acidic soils.

Fungal Metagenome of Chernevaya Taiga Soils: Taxonomic Composition, Differential Abundance and Factors Related to Plant Gigantism

“…From this we can conclude that conventional farmer fertilization practices (FFP) based on nutrient addition can be optimized with respect to their effect on mycorrhizal fungi, thereby increasing the richness and diversity of fungal communities, and through them influencing soil productivity. These findings are consistent with those of Muneer et al [39], who compared the effects of conventional FFP and different nutrient management practices on fungal composition and diversity in red soils.…”

Effect of planting and mowing cover crops as livestock feed on soil quality and pear production

“…Ascomycota is the most ubiquitous phylum, which can decompose the organic substrate ( Ye et al., 2020 ) and Basidiomycota can produce massive fruiting bodies and cause decomposition of litter ( Frac et al., 2021 ). Mortierellomycota , which plays an important role in the carbon cycle and decomposition of organic matter ( Muneer et al, 2021 ), was found in the different treatments. These fungi play a significant role in storing mineral nutrients, metabolites, and water ( Ozimek and Hanaka, 2021 ), and the increase of RA at 20–40 cm could be very advantageous to plants.…”

Changes in Soil Organic Carbon Fractions and Fungal Communities, Subsequent to Different Management Practices in Moso Bamboo Plantations

“…Soil microbial diversity had a strong link to soil quality and the nutrient cycling rate [ 62 ]. Owing to their rapid response to soil changes, soil pH and nutrient levels are widely used to assess soil quality and microbial communities [ 63 , 64 ]. In our study, the fungal richness and diversity were lowest in the M2 soil, which may be due to the decreased soil physicochemical properties, compared with that of soil from the M0 and M1 plots.…”