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Soil acidification induced decline disease of Myrica rubra: aluminum toxicity and bacterial community response analyses

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Abstract

The decline disease of Myrica rubra tree is commonly induced by soil acidification, which affects the yield and the quality of fruits. It is hypothesized that aluminum toxicity and microbial community changes caused by soil acidification were the main causes of decline of Myrica rubra tree. In order to explore the decline mechanism of Myrica rubra tree, soils around healthy and decline trees of Myrica rubra were collected to compare the concentrations of different aluminum forms, enzyme activities, and bacterial community structure. In this study, soil samples were collected from the five main production areas of Myrica rubra, Eastern China. The results showed that diseased soils had higher exchangeable aluminum, lower enzyme activities, and lower microbial diversity than healthy soils at various sites. The toxic Al significantly decreased bacterial diversity and altered the bacterial community structure. The diseased soils had significantly lower α-diversity indices (ACE, Chao1, and Shannon) of bacterial community. The Al toxicity deceased the relative abundance of Acidobacteria and Planctomycetes, while enhanced the relative abundance of Cyanobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes in soils. Co-occurrence network analysis indicated that the Al toxicity simplified the bacterial network. The soil ExAl content was significantly and negatively correlated with the nodes (r = -0.69, p < 0.05) and edges (r = -0.77, p < 0.01) of the bacterial network. These results revealed that the Al toxicity altered soil bacterial community structure, resulting in the decline disease of Myrica rubra tree, while highlighted the role of Al forms in the plant growth. This finding is of considerable significance to the better management of acidification-induced soil degradation and the quality of fruits.

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Data availability

The datasets used during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was supported by the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (2019C02038 and 2020C02001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Han Chen, Jingjing Liu, Yu Tian & Shenggao Lu

  2. Institute of Horticulture, Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou, 310021, China

    Haiying Ren

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  1. Han Chen
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Contributions

Han Chen: Sample collection, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—original draft. Haiying Ren: Conceptualization, Field investigation, Sample collection. Jingjing Liu and Yu Tian: Sample collection, Soil analyses. Shenggao Lu: Conceptualization, Data curation, Supervision, Writing—review & editing.

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Correspondence to Shenggao Lu.

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Han Chen and Haiying Ren contributed to the work equally and should be regarded as co-first authors.

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Chen, H., Ren, H., Liu, J. et al. Soil acidification induced decline disease of Myrica rubra: aluminum toxicity and bacterial community response analyses. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 45435–45448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19165-3

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