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High Abundance and Role of Antifungal Bacteria in Compost-Treated Soils in a Wildfire Area

  • Soil Microbiology
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Abstract

Compost has been widely used in order to promote vegetation growth in post-harvested and burned soils. The effects on soil microorganisms were scarcely known, so we performed the microbial analyses in a wildfire area of the Taebaek Mountains, Korea, during field surveys from May to September 2007. Using culture-dependent and -independent methods, we found that compost used in burned soils influenced a greater impact on soil fungi than bacteria. Compost-treated soils contained higher levels of antifungal strains in the genera Bacillus and Burkholderia than non-treated soils. When the antifungal activity of Burkholderia sp. strain O1a_RA002, which had been isolated from a compost-treated soil, was tested for the growth inhibition of bacteria and fungi isolated from burned soils, the membrane-filtered culture supernatant inhibited 19/37 fungal strains including soil fungi, Eupenicillium spp. and Devriesia americana; plant pathogens, Polyschema larviformis and Massaria platani; an animal pathogen, Mortierella verticillata; and an unidentified Ascomycota. However, this organism only inhibited 11/151 bacterial strains tested. These patterns were compatible with the culture-independent DGGE results, suggesting that the compost used in burned soils had a greater impact on soil fungi than bacteria through the promotion of the growth of antifungal bacteria. Our findings indicate that compost used in burned soils is effective in restoring soil conditions to a state closer to those of nearby unburned forest soils at the early stage of secondary succession.

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Abbreviations

DGGE:

Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis

C/N:

Ratio of carbon to nitrogen

OM:

Organic matter

EC:

Electrical conductivity

ApCFU:

Approximate colony-forming unit

PCR:

Polymerase chain reaction

OD:

Optical density

TS:

Tryptic soy

CS:

Culture supernatant

FAME:

Fatty acid methyl ester

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Acknowledgements

We express thanks to Young-Gun Zo (Kyungsung University, Pusan, Republic of Korea) for the cluster analysis of DGGE gels. This study was partly supported by a research project (FE0500-1997-01) of Korea Forest Research Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Catholic University of Daegu, Daegu, 705-718, Republic of Korea

    Yong-Hak Kim & Byung Tae Park

  2. School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University, Kwanak-Gu, Seoul, 151-742, Republic of Korea

    In Sung Kim, Eun Young Moon, Jeong Soo Park, Sang-Jong Kim & Eun Ju Lee

  3. Division of Ecology, Korea Forest Research Institute, Seoul, 130-712, Republic of Korea

    Joo-Hoon Lim

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  1. Yong-Hak Kim
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Correspondence to Eun Ju Lee.

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Table S1

Estimation of approximate colony-forming unit (ApCFU, cfu g−1 dry weight soil), specific growth rate constant (k, d−1), and a time constant (t ½, d) for the half-maximum colony count of cultivable microorganisms in burned soils and nearby unburned forest soils (PDF 76.0 kb)

Table S2

API-20E, API-20NE, API-ZYM, and API-Coryne test results for numerical characterization for the selected antifungal bacteria. All negative results are excluded (PDF 99.7 kb)

Table S3

Average percentages of FAME analyses for the selected antifungal bacteria (PDF 100 kb)

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Kim, YH., Kim, I.S., Moon, E.Y. et al. High Abundance and Role of Antifungal Bacteria in Compost-Treated Soils in a Wildfire Area. Microb Ecol 62, 725–737 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-011-9839-2

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