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Successive mineral nitrogen or phosphorus fertilization alone significantly altered bacterial community rather than bacterial biomass in plantation soil

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Bacteria play determining roles in forest soil environment and contribute to essential functions in the cycling of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Understanding the effects of different fertilizer applications, especially successive fertilization, on soil properties and bacterial community could reveal the impacts of fertilization on forest soil ecology and shed light on the nutrient cycling in forest system. This study aimed to evaluate the impacts of successive mineral N (NH4NO3) and P (NaH2PO4) fertilization at different rates, alone or together, on soil bacterial biomass and communities at 0–5, 5–10, and 10–20 cm. Compared with the control, N fertilization decreased soil pH, but P alone or with N fertilization had negligibly negative impacts on soil pH. Different mineral fertilizer applications, alone or together, showed no significant effects on soil organic matter contents, relative to the control treatment. Bacterial biomass remained stable to different fertilizations but decreased with sampling depths. Sole N or P fertilization, rather than combined fertilizations, significantly changed soil bacterial community structures. Our results demonstrated that mineral N or P fertilization alone significantly affected bacterial community structures rather than biomass in the plantation soils.

Key points

• Impacts of successive mineral fertilization on soil bacteria were determined.

• Mineral fertilization showed negligible impacts on bacterial biomass.

• N additions stimulated Chloroflexi relative abundances.

• Mineral N or P fertilization significantly altered bacterial community structure.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Innovation Fund Designated for Graduate Students of Jiangxi Agricultural University (NDYC2017-B001), the National Natural Science Foundations of China (31760200 and 31730014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Forestry, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, 330045, China

    Yun Niu, Yuanqiu Liu, Fusheng Chen, Xiaomin Guo, Handong Luo, Shuli Wang, Junyi Xie & Xi Yuan

  2. Key Laboratory Forest Resources Conservation and Utilization in the Southwest Mountains of China, Ministry of Education, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, 650224, China

    Yun Niu

  3. College of Resources and Environment, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China

    Manyun Zhang

  4. Environmental Futures Research Institute, School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, 4111, Australia

    Manyun Zhang, Shahla Hosseini Bai & Zhihong Xu

  5. School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, Bundaberg, Queensland, 4670, Australia

    Shahla Hosseini Bai

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  1. Yun Niu
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  2. Manyun Zhang
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  3. Shahla Hosseini Bai
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  4. Zhihong Xu
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  5. Yuanqiu Liu
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  7. Xiaomin Guo
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Contributions

YN, MYZ, YQL, and FSC conceived and designed research. YN, HDL SLW, JYX, and XY conducted experiments and contributed to data analysis. YN, MYZ, SHB, ZHX, and XMG wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Manyun Zhang or Yuanqiu Liu.

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Niu, Y., Zhang, M., Bai, S.H. et al. Successive mineral nitrogen or phosphorus fertilization alone significantly altered bacterial community rather than bacterial biomass in plantation soil. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 104, 7213–7224 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-020-10761-2

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