Insights into the Regulation of Rhizosphere Bacterial Communities by Application of Bio-organic Fertilizer in Pseudostellaria heterophylla Monoculture Regime

Abstract

The biomass and quality of <i>Pseudostellariae heterophylla</i> suffers a significant decline under monoculture. Since rhizosphere miobiome plays crucial roles in soil health, deep pyrosequencing combined with qPCR was applied to characterize the composition and structure of soil bacterial community under monoculture and different amendments. The results showed compared with the 1st-year planted (FP), 2nd-year monoculture of <i>P. heterophylla</i> (SP) led to a significant decline in yield and resulted in a significant increase in <i>Fusarium oxysporum</i> but a decline in <i>Burkholderia</i> spp. Bio-organic fertilizer (MT) formulated by combining antagonistic bacteria with organic matter could significantly promote the yield by regulating rhizosphere bacterial community. However, organic fertilizer (MO) without antagonistic bacteria could not suppress <i>Fusarium</i> wilt. Multivariate statistics analysis showed a distinct separation between the healthy samples (FP and MT) and the unhealthy samples (SP and MO), suggesting a strong relationship between soil microbial community and plant performance. Furthermore, we found the application of bio-organic fertilizer MT could significantly increase the bacterial community diversity and restructure microbial community with relatively fewer pathogenic <i>F. oxysporum</i> and more beneficial <i>Burkholderia</i> spp. In conclusion, the application of novel bio-organic fertilizer could effectively suppress <i>Fusarium</i> wilt by enriching the antagonistic bacteria and enhancing the bacterial diversity.