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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Terrestrial Microbiology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1487619
This article is part of the Research Topic Soil Microbial Communities to Promote Suppressiveness against Soil-Borne Pathogens and Diseases View all 5 articles

The effect of Torreya grandis inter-cropping with Polygonatum sibiricum on soil microbial community

Provisionally accepted
  • Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China

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

    Background: Inter-cropping is a reasonable planting pattern between different plants.Inter-cropping of Torreya grandis with Polygonatum sibiricum is a relatively mature planting pattern in China, which has been applied to improve soil ecological environment and reduce the occurrence of pests and diseases in China. However, there is currently limited knowledge on the response of soil microbial communities to this practice.In this study, we employed Illumina MiSeq sequencing coupled with Functional Annotation of Prokaryotic Taxa (FAPROTAX) and Fungi Functional Guild (FUNGuild) analyses to investigate the dynamic changes in soil microbial communities across seven treated groups.The results showed that the rhizosphere soil of Torreya-Polygonatum intercropping exhibited higher microbial community richness, diversity and evenness than mono-cropping (ITR > TR, IPR > PR). Inter-cropping increased the abundance of Micrococcaceae, Xanthobacteraceae, Saitozyma, while decreased Bacillus, Burkholderia, Streptomyces, Cladosporium and Gibberella significantly of the rhizosphere soil of T. grandis. Further, the abundance of pathogens, such as Fusarium and Neocosmospora, was higher in mono-cropping samples compared to inter-cropping.There existed distinct variations in bacterial and fungal communities among all groups except for IB and TB. The FAPROTAX and FUNGuild analyses results indicated that inter-cropping significantly enhanced soil microbial function associated with nutrient cycling and exhibited a consistent increase in the relative abundance of nitrogen-cycling and carbon-cycling bacteria, and decreased the abundance of plant pathogen guild in the inter-cropping sample ITR compared to the mono-cropping TR.Our findings suggest that T. grandis inter-cropping with P. sibiricum not only enhance the diversity of soil microbial communities, but also improve the nitrogen and carbon cycling functions. In addition, the inter-cropping can effectively reduce the relative abundance of some soil-borne pathogens for T. grandis and P. sibiricum, indicating that this intercropping method may alleviate the impact of pathogens on crops, thus providing assistance for plant disease prevention and sustainable management.

    Keywords: plant health, Soil microbiota, agroforestry, sustainable development, Soil microbial function

    Received: 28 Aug 2024; Accepted: 04 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Wang, Peng, Yuan, Zhou, Huang and Wang. 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:
    Jianqin Huang, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China
    Haonan Wang, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, Hangzhou, China

    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.