Regulation of soil microbial community structures and watermelon Fusarium wilt by using bio-organic fertilizer

Abstract:

[Objective] The objective of our study was to compare the soil bacterial communities by using bio-organic fertilizer in disease occurring period, and to excavate the closely related bacterial genera to Watermelon Fusarium wilt.[Methods] The V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene in bacterial DNA was amplified using the polymerase chain reaction technique and sequenced by the Illumina Miseq platform to diversity analysis of the soil microbial community composition after application of bio-organic fertilizer in different years (2016 onset stage and 2017 onset stage).[Results] There was no significant difference in alpha diversity indices among soil microbial community diversity at different years, but the diversity richness increased slightly after applying bio-organic fertilizer by comparison with the control. At phylum level, the Proteobacteria and Firmicutes were the relatively stable bacterial communities in these two periods. However, at genus level, the major dynamic bacteria were Bacillus, Enterococcus, Lactococcus and Mizugakiibacter. Furthermore, the Spearman analysis showed that they were negatively correlated with the watermelon Fusarium wilt disease morbidity.[Conclusion] The application of bio-organic fertilizer plays a certain role in the control of watermelon Fusarium wilt by helping ecological restoration of microbial communities in continuously cropped watermelon-growing soil. Thus, the approach to identify the dynamic changes of soil microbes and find out their relationships between the incidence of watermelon Fusarium wilt provided a new idea of helping control watermelon Fusarium wilt by adjusting soil microbial community structure.