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Responses of bacterial community and functional marker genes of nitrogen cycling to biochar, compost and combined amendments in soil

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Biochar and compost are seen as two attractive waste management options and are used for soil amendment and pollution remediation. The interaction between biochar and composting may improve the potential benefits of biochar and compost. We investigated soil physicochemical properties, bacterial community, bacterial 16S rRNA, and functional marker genes of nitrogen cycling of the soil remedied with nothing (S), compost (SC), biochar (SB), a mixture of compost and biochar (SBC), composted biochar (SBced), and a composted mixture of biochar and biomass (SBCing). The results were that all amendments (1) increased the bacterial community richness (except SB) and SBCing showed the greatest efficiency; (2) increased the bacterial community diversity (SBCing > SBC > SC > SBced > SB > S); and (3) changed the gene copy numbers of 16S rRNA, nirK, nirS, and nosZ genes of bacteria, ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB). All amendments (except SB) could increase the gene copy number of 16S rRNA, and SBCing had the greatest efficiency. The changes of soil bacterial community richness and diversity and the gene copy numbers of 16S rRNA, nirK, nirS, nosZ, AOA, and AOB would affect carbon and nitrogen cycling of the ecosystem and also implied that BCing had the greatest efficiency on soil amendment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Haipeng Wu, Guangming Zeng, Jie Liang, Xiaodong Li, Ming Chen, Piao Xu, Yaoyu Zhou, Fei Li, Liang Hu & Jia Wan

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control (Hunan University), Ministry of Education, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Haipeng Wu, Guangming Zeng, Jie Liang, Xiaodong Li, Ming Chen, Piao Xu, Yaoyu Zhou, Fei Li, Liang Hu & Jia Wan

  3. Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China

    Haipeng Wu, Jin Chen, Jijun Xu & Juan Dai

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  1. Haipeng Wu
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  2. Guangming Zeng
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  3. Jie Liang
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  4. Jin Chen
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  5. Jijun Xu
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  6. Juan Dai
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  7. Xiaodong Li
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  8. Ming Chen
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  9. Piao Xu
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  10. Yaoyu Zhou
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  11. Fei Li
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  12. Liang Hu
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  13. Jia Wan
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Correspondence to Guangming Zeng or Jie Liang.

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Funding

This research was financially supported by the CRSRI Open Research Program (CKWV2015203/KY), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51521006, 51479072, 51378190, 51509014, 51579094, and 51508177), the New Century Excellent Researcher Award Program from the Ministry of Education of China (NCET-08-0181), and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT-13R17).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. The article is an original paper, is not under consideration by another journal, and has not been published previously. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Wu, H., Zeng, G., Liang, J. et al. Responses of bacterial community and functional marker genes of nitrogen cycling to biochar, compost and combined amendments in soil. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 8583–8591 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7614-5

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