Increasing Plant Mycorrhizal Status and Improving Soil Properties with Crop Rotation.

Increasing Plant Mycorrhizal Status and Improving Soil Properties with Crop Rotation

Bouzeriba Alsunuse¹, Peter D. Stahl¹, Jay Norton¹, and Urszula Norton²

¹ Department of Ecosystem Science & Management, University of Wyoming

² Department of Plant Sciences, University of Wyoming

Abstract

Mycorrhiza are the most common mutualistic symbiosis between fungi and plant roots. Benefits of mycorrhizal fungi to plants are to increase growth and productivity of the plants by increasing uptake of nutrients and water. In return, the host plant provides carbohydrate (energy) to the fungi. Agricultural management practices such as tillage, cover crops and crop rotation effect the distribution and abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in soil. Cover rotation provides benefits such as: prevention of soil erosion (wind and water), reduced weed growth, increased soil organic matter, improved soil properties, and increased biomass and diversity of mycorrhizal fungi and other soil microorganisms. Hence, a field experiment was conducted at Powell Research and Extension Center (PREC) during 2014 to 2016 with the aim of evaluating the influence of crop rotation on AMF biomass in soil, AMF inoculum potential, total microbial biomass (TMB), soil macroaggregation, soil organic carbon (SOC), total carbon (TC) and total nitrogen (TN). The result during 2014 to 2016 demonstrated crop rotation increased concentration of AMF biomarker phospholipid fatty acid in soil beneath dry beans (0.11 to 0.4 µg g soil^-1) and barley (0.13 to 0.23 µg g soil^-1) crops. In addition, there were significant increases (p < 0.05) in the proportions of soil macroaggregations, TC, SOC, TN between 2014, 2015 and 2016 from average value across bean and barley crops. Overall rotations involving beans, barley and sugarbeet enhanced soil chemical, physical and microbial properties in three-year rotations