Journal Article

Protist communities are more sensitive to nitrogen fertilization than other microorganisms in diverse agricultural soils

He, Ji-Zheng, Wei, Wen-Xue, Zhang, Li-Mei, Han, Li-Li, Fang, Yun-Ting, Wang, Jun-Tao, Zhao, Zhi-Bo, Geisen, Stefan, Li, Pei-Pei, Shen, Ju-Pei

2019

Overview

Background Agricultural food production is at the base of food and fodder, with fertilization having fundamentally and continuously increased crop yield over the last decades. The performance of crops is intimately tied to their microbiome as they together form holobionts. The importance of the microbiome for plant performance is, however, notoriously ignored in agricultural systems as fertilization disconnects the dependency of plants for often plant-beneficial microbial processes. Moreover, we lack a holistic understanding of how fertilization regimes affect the soil microbiome. Here, we examined the effect of a 2-year fertilization regime (no nitrogen fertilization control, nitrogen fertilization, and nitrogen fertilization plus straw amendment) on entire soil microbiomes (bacteria, fungi, and protist) in three common agricultural soil types cropped with maize in two seasons. Results We found that the application of nitrogen fertilizers more strongly affected protist than bacterial and fungal communities. Nitrogen fertilization indirectly reduced protist diversity through changing abiotic properties and bacterial and fungal communities which differed between soil types and sampling seasons. Nitrogen fertilizer plus straw amendment had greater effects on soil physicochemical properties and microbiome diversity than nitrogen addition alone. Moreover, nitrogen fertilization, even more together with straw, increased soil microbiome network complexity, suggesting that the application of nitrogen fertilizers tightened soil microbiomes interactions. Conclusions Together, our results suggest that protists are the most susceptible microbiome component to the application of nitrogen fertilizers. As protist communities also exhibit the strongest seasonal dynamics, they serve as the most sensitive bioindicators of soil changes. Changes in protist communities might have long-term effects if some of the key protist hubs that govern microbiome complexities as top microbiome predators are altered. This study serves as the stepping stone to promote protists as promising agents in targeted microbiome engineering to help in reducing the dependency on exogenous unsustainably high fertilization and pesticide applications.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Agricultural industry / Animal feeding and feeds / Antibiotics / Bacteria / Bacteria - drug effects / Bacteria - growth & development / Bacteria - isolation & purification / Biodiversity / Bioindicators / Bioinformatics / Biological indicators / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Corn / Crops, Agricultural - growth & development / Drug resistance / Eukaryota - drug effects / Eukaryota - growth & development / Eukaryota - isolation & purification / Fertilization / Fertilizers / Fertilizers - analysis / Fungi / Fungi - drug effects / Fungi - growth & development / Fungi - isolation & purification / Genomes / High-throughput sequencing / Indicator species / Long-term effects / Medical Microbiology / Microbial Ecology / Microbial Genetics and Genomics / Microbiology / Microbiome / Microbiomes / Microorganisms / Nitrogen / Nitrogen - adverse effects / Nitrogen fertilizers / Pesticide application / Pesticides / Phylogeny / Physicochemical properties / Predators / Soil - chemistry / Soil fertility / Soil Microbiology / Soil microorganisms / Soil protists / Soil type / Soil types / Soils / Straw / Taxonomy / Virology