ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Variations in Fungal Diversity
in a Biochar-Treated Continuous Cotton-Cropped
Soil Environment Through
Metagenomics-Based Analyses
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Industrial Crops Institute of Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences/Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology
and Breeding in the Middle Reaches of the Changjiang River, Wuhan, Hubei Province
Submission date: 2019-09-02
Final revision date: 2019-11-01
Acceptance date: 2019-11-03
Online publication date: 2020-03-09
Publication date: 2020-05-12
Corresponding author
Jiayang Lan
Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2020;29(5):3143-3152
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ABSTRACT
Biochar amendment strategy has remained a good alternative for improving soil fertility and
alleviating climate change challenges. There exists inadequate information on the role of biochar in
influencing soil fungal community structure, especially up to a 40-year chrono-sequence cropping of
plants such as cotton. This study was therefore purposed to determining the soil fungal constituents and
their respective diversity in biochar-treated (0 t·ha-1, 20 t·ha-1 and 40 t·ha-1) soils of different continuously
cotton cropping years (5, 10, 20 and 40 years). The study applied high-throughput sequencing of the
the 18S rRNA gene and integrated biostatistics-based techniques to screen the soil fungal community
assemblage, key fungal species, soil fungal association structure and metabolic functions, the soil
fungal constituents, their proportions and diversity in the biochar-treated cotton pots over the different
continuous cropping years. The most abundant fungal phyla were Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. In
addition, Aspergillus, a pathogenic fungus, was also detected in all our sequence data. Soil pH changes
were also identified as a key factor in shaping soil fungal communities. Over the continuous cropping
duration, the soil pH gradually declined. At 20 years of continuous cropping, the number of fungal
OTU’s started to increase and their highest overall quantity was achieved at 20 years of continuous
cropping, when pH was 7.3±0.1. Overall, our study findings show that biochar application over a long
continuous cropping system alters soil fungal diversity and is therefore an important factor in soil
quality management.