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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Agron.
Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fagro.2024.1502402
This article is part of the Research Topic Agroecological Practices To Enhance Resilience Of Farming Systems View all 6 articles

Chitosan reduces naturally occurring plant pathogenic fungi and increases nematophagous fungus Purpureocillium in soil under field conditions

Provisionally accepted
Raquel Lopez-Nuñez Raquel Lopez-Nuñez 1Jorge Prieto Rubio Jorge Prieto Rubio 2Inmaculada Bautista Carrascosa Inmaculada Bautista Carrascosa 3Antonio Lidón Antonio Lidón 3Miguel Valverde Miguel Valverde 1Federico Lopez-Moya Federico Lopez-Moya 1*Luis V. Lopez-Llorca Luis V. Lopez-Llorca 1
  • 1 University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain
  • 2 Research Center on Desertification, University of Valencia, Moncada, Valencia, Spain
  • 3 Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Valencia, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Chitosan effects on soil properties was analysed both under laboratory conditions by incubation with constant humidity and temperature, and under field conditions in two persimmon field plots with conventional and ecological management. Chitosan was applied in solution or as coacervates. Application of chitosan reduced soil pH, conductivity (CE) and cation exchange capacity (CEC) in pots when applied at field capacity. Chitosan did not affect field soil respiration that is greatly dependent of soil moisture and temperature. Metabarcoding showed chitosan significantly modifies fungal genera composition of ecologically managed field soil. On the contrary, chitosan caused no significant differences in bacterial taxa composition of soil under field conditions. Chitosan coacervates increased naturally occurring nematophagous fungus Purpureocillium (ca. 50 fold) in soil respect to chitosan solution treated soil and untreated controls.Besides chitosan reduced inoculum of plant pathogenic fungi Alternaria and Fusarium (20 and 50%, respectively) in field soil. Soil microbial network analysis for ITS2+V1-V2 regions revealed that the nematophagous fungus Pochonia promoted network clustering into modules. Further, network analysis for ITS2+V3-V4 regionsed that the nematode trapping-fungus Orbilia and bacteria belonging to Acidimicrobiales and Cytophagales significantly contributed to network clustering in field soil. Our results show that chitosan coacervates increased soil nematophagous microbiota and that both nematode egg-parasites and trapping-fungi help to structure soil microbiota.

    Keywords: Chitosan, metabarcoding, Nematophagous fungi, plant pathogenic fungi, co-occurrence networks, Coacervates

    Received: 26 Sep 2024; Accepted: 16 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lopez-Nuñez, Rubio, Carrascosa, Lidón, Valverde, Lopez-Moya and Lopez-Llorca. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Federico Lopez-Moya, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.