Abstract
Aims
Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi establish root symbioses that can improve acquisition of nutrients such as nitrogen (N) from soils, leading to improvements in host plant growth. Previously, we showed that applying AM fungal necromass to the rhizosphere could stimulate plant growth. Here we investigated the interactions between AM fungi (living or dead) and ammonia oxidizers (AO), a key group of soil prokaryotes involved in soil N cycling, to understand the effects of these interactions on plant N levels. We were interested in whether the necromass contained any significant biological nitrification inhibitory (BNI) activity that could account for the previously suggested antagonism between AM fungi and AO.
Methods
We set up a compartmented pot experiment with Andropogon gerardii as a host plant, which included rhizosphere (amended with living and/or dead AM fungal biomass) and a root-free zone. The latter contained a mesh bag with 15N-labelled plant litter.
Results
Inoculation with living AM fungus enhanced plant biomass and nutrient acquisition, including increased transfer of 15N from the mesh bags to the plants. Additionally, AO bacteria but not archaea were significantly suppressed in the mesh bags. In contrast, AM fungal necromass had minimal effect on plant biomass and nutrient acquisition. Surprisingly, it stimulated the growth of both AO bacteria and archaea in the rhizosphere of non-mycorrhizal plants.
Conclusions
Based on the above, we found no support for AM fungi suppressing the AO through an elusive BNI production. Rather, it seems that the main mechanism of AM fungal-AO interaction is substrate competition.
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Data availability
Original data of the research used for data analysis are available in Supplementary Information (supplementary file3). The paired sequences (after initial quality filter but before rarefaction and 18S amplicon splitting to protistan and fungal sequences) generated in this study were deposited in the Sequence Read Archive under accession number PRJNA943160.
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Acknowledgements
The research described here was funded by Czech Science Foundation (projects 21-07247S and 23-04690S) and further supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences (RVO 61388971).
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Sun, D., Kotianová, M., Rozmoš, M. et al. Arbuscular mycorrhizal hyphae selectively suppress soil ammonia oxidizers – but probably not by production of biological nitrification inhibitors. Plant Soil 491, 627–643 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06144-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06144-x