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Succession of bacterial community during composting: dissimilarity between compost mixture and biochar additive

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Abstract

Previous research showed that biochar addition facilitated composting and elevated nutrient retention. However, few of these studies explored bacterial structure and abundance in the compost mixture and biochar additive. Thus, this study aims to distinguish bacterial communities in both compost and bamboo biochar (BB) additive. Results indicated that the dynamics of nutrient contents in compost and BB samples were in a similar pattern, although there were lower levels of nutrients and metals (i.e., Cu and Zn) in BB additives. The total number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in both compost and BB additives peaked on day 7 and then gradually reduced during composting. There was more abundance of bacteria in compost, whereas the diversity of bacteria was more in BB additives. Furthermore, the dominant bacteria in compost and BB samples were distinct at the different stages of composting. The Firmicutes steadily decreased in compost samples (from 34.78% to 7.65%), while it was the dominant phylum in BB additives during the whole composting period. Furthermore, Ruminofilibacter, Pseudoxanthomonas, and Actinomadura were the most abundant genera in compost samples than Pseudoxanthomonas, Azoarcus, and Paenibacillus in BB additives at the final stage of composting. Results from this study could provide a theoretical reference for the sound performance of biochar-added composting.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41907120), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU020002), and the State Cultivation Base of Eco-agriculture for Southwest Mountainous Land, Southwest University. We also thank anonymous referees for their constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Research Center for Agriculture Green Development in Yangtze River Basin, College of Resources and Environment, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Muyuan Zhang & Ran Xiao

  2. College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China

    Weng Liang, Zhineng Tu, Ronghua Li, Zengqiang Zhang & Amjad Ali

  3. School of Environmental and Municipal Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an, 710055, China

    Amjad Ali

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  1. Muyuan Zhang
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Contributions

MZ original paper writing, experimenting, RX experiment designing, writing, funding acquisition; WL experimenting; ZT sample analysis, data analysis, RL data curation, supervision; AA editing, writing; ZZ supervision.

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Correspondence to Ran Xiao.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.

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Zhang, M., Liang, W., Tu, Z. et al. Succession of bacterial community during composting: dissimilarity between compost mixture and biochar additive. Biochar 3, 229–237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42773-020-00078-8

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