Soil fungal taxonomic and functional community as affected by biochar properties

Publication date: Available online 5 September 2018Source: Soil Biology and BiochemistryAuthor(s): Zhongmin Dai, Akio Enders, Jorge L.M. Rodrigues, Kelly L. Hanley, Philip C. Brookes, Jianming Xu, Johannes LehmannAbstractBiochar greatly influences the soil bacterial community and nutrient transformations, while our knowledge of the responses of fungal lifestyles to biochar is still in its infancy. Here, we used experimental pre-treatments (acetone extraction) of nutrient-rich biochars to identify which major biochar properties influence fungi the most: the easily mineralizable C, fused aromatic backbone, or the inorganic nutrients of biochars. Our objective was to investigate how different biochar fractions (easily mineralizable C, fused aromatic C, nutrients) structure the fungal taxonomic and functional communities. The easily mineralizable C of biochars induced greater short-term changes in fungal community composition compared to the fused aromatic C. The easily mineralizable C significantly decreased the relative abundance of Basidiomycota by avg. 10.6%, while it had no effects on Ascomycota and Zygomycota. Co-occurrence network indicated that saprophytic fungi were self-assembled in the easily mineralizable C-sufficient environment, whereas they were the connectors to interact with other groups when lower amounts of energy in form of mineralizable C were present. Thus, the easily mineralizable C in biochar as a microbial C source probably promoted saprotroph growth, cau...
Source: Soil Biology and Biochemistry - Category: Biology Source Type: research