Agriculture has long employed phylogenetic rules whereby farmers are encouraged to rotate taxonomically unrelated plants in shared soil. Although this forms a central tenet of sustainable agriculture, strangely, this on‐farm “rule of thumb” has never been rigorously tested in a scientific framework. To experimentally evaluate the relationship between phylogenetic distance and crop performance, we used a plant–soil feedback approach whereby 35 crops and weeds varying in their relatedness to tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) were tested in a two‐year field experiment. We used community profiling of the bacteria and fungi to determine the extent to which soil microbes contribute to phenotypic differences in crop growth. Overall, tomato yield was ca. 15% lower in soil previously cultivated with tomato; yet, past the species level there was no effect of phylogenetic distance on crop performance. Soil microbial communities, on the other hand, were compositionally more similar between close plant relatives. Random forest regression predicted log₁₀ phylogenetic distance to tomato with moderate accuracy (R² = .52), primarily driven by bacteria in the genus Sphingobium. These data indicate that, beyond avoiding conspecifics, evolutionary history contributes little to understanding plant–soil feedbacks in agricultural fields; however, microbial legacies can be predicted by species identity and relatedness.

中文翻译：

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系统发育农业：进化历史能否通过土壤微生物组预测作物轮作？


农业长期以来一直采用系统发育规则，鼓励农民在共享土壤中轮作分类学上不相关的植物。尽管这构成了可持续农业的核心原则，但奇怪的是，这种农场的“经验法则”从未在科学框架中经过严格的测试。为了通过实验评估系统发育距离和作物性能之间的关系，我们使用了植物-土壤反馈方法，在为期两年的田间实验中测试了与番茄（ Solanum lycopersicum ）相关性不同的 35 种作物和杂草。我们使用细菌和真菌的群落分析来确定土壤微生物对作物生长表型差异的影响程度。总体而言，番茄产量约为。以前种植番茄的土壤中降低 15%；然而，超过物种水平，系统发育距离对作物性能没有影响。另一方面，近亲植物之间的土壤微生物群落在组成上更加相似。随机森林回归以中等精度 ( R ² = .52) 预测了与番茄的 log ₁₀系统发育距离，主要由鞘氨醇属细菌驱动。这些数据表明，除了避免同种之外，进化史对理解农业领域的植物-土壤反馈贡献甚微。然而，微生物遗产可以通过物种同一性和相关性来预测。