Watermelon is susceptible to Fusarium wilt in successively mono-cropped soil. Pot experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of intercropping with aerobic rice on Fusarium wilt in watermelon. The tested soil was classified as a loam soil, previously planted with watermelon and collected from Hexian county, Anhui province, China. The results obtained are listed as follows: (1) 66.7% ...

Microbial communities in soil provide a wide range of ecosystem services. On the small scale, nutrient rich hotspots in soil developed from the activities of animals or plants are important drivers for the composition of microbial communities and their functional patterns. However, in subsoil, the spatial heterogeneity of microbes with differing lifestyles has been rarely considered so far. In ...

The symbiosis between tall fescue (Festuca arundinaceum) and a shoot-specific fungal endophyte (Neotyphodium coenophialum) has been relatively well studied but little attention has been given to how this relationship may impact the soil microbial community. Understanding how the symbiosis may structure soil microbial communities is important for understanding the cascade of effects that this sy...

The impact of multiple-year (0–5 years) cultivation of transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton on the functional bacterial populations in rhizosphere soil was investigated. The transgenic Bt ? CpTI cotton line SGK321 and a non-Bt cotton line Shiyuan321 were planted in four fields in which Bt cotton had been continuously cultivated for 0, 1, 3, and 5 years. Rhizosphere soil samples were co...

The broad-spectrum antibiotic 2,4-diacetylphloroglucinol (Phl) is a major determinant in the biological control of a wide range of plant diseases by fluorescent Pseudomonas spp. A protocol was developed to readily isolate and quantify Phl from broth and agar cultures and from the rhizosphere environment of plants. Extraction with ethyl acetate at an acidic pH was suitable for both in vitro and ...

The hypothesis that sweet potato genotypes containing different starch yields in their tuberous roots can affect the bacterial communities present in the rhizosphere (soil adhering to tubers) was tested in this study. Tuberous roots of field-grown sweet potato of genotypes IPB-149 (commercial genotype), IPB-052, and IPB-137 were sampled three and six months after planting and analyzed by denatu...

Decomposition of soil organic carbon (SOC) is the main process governing the release of CO(2) into the atmosphere from terrestrial systems. Although the importance of soil-root interactions for SOC decomposition has increasingly been recognized, their long-term effect on SOC decomposition remains poorly understood. Here we provide experimental evidence for a rhizosphere priming effect, in which...

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the most important cereal crop in the world. However, soil salinity has become a major problem affecting plant productivity due to arable field degradation. Thus, transgenic maize transformed with a salinity tolerance gene has been developed to further evaluate its salt tolerance and effects on agronomic traits. It is necessary to analyze the potential environmental risk ...

There is increasing evidence that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) play essential roles in communication and competition between soil microorganisms. Here we assessed volatile-mediated interactions of a synthetic microbial community in a model system that mimics the natural conditions in the heterogeneous soil environment along the rhizosphere. Phylogenetic different soil bacterial isolates (B...

Long-term vanilla monocropping often results in the occurrence of vanilla Fusarium wilt disease, seriously affecting its production all over the world. In the present study, vanilla exhibited significantly less Fusarium wilt disease in the soil of a long-term continuously cropped black pepper orchard. The entire fungal communities of bulk and rhizosphere soils between the black pepper-vanilla s...