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Effects of repeated cultivation of transgenic Bt cotton on functional bacterial populations in rhizosphere soil

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Abstract

The impact of multiple-year (0–5 years) cultivation of transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton on the functional bacterial populations in rhizosphere soil was investigated. The transgenic Bt + CpTI cotton line SGK321 and a non-Bt cotton line Shiyuan321 were planted in four fields in which Bt cotton had been continuously cultivated for 0, 1, 3, and 5 years. Rhizosphere soil samples were collected at the seedling, squaring, flower and boll, and boll-opening stages of cotton. Numbers of bacteria involved in nitrogen-fixing, organic phosphate-dissolving, inorganic phosphate-dissolving, and potassium-dissolving were measured with cultivation-dependent approaches. The data presented here showed no consistent statistically significant differences in the numbers of different groups of functional bacteria between rhizosphere soil of Bt and non-Bt cotton in the same field, and no obvious trends in the numbers of the various group of functional bacteria with the increasing duration of Bt cotton cultivation. These studies suggest that multiple-year cultivation of transgenic Bt cotton may not affect the functional bacterial populations in rhizosphere soil.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Jiancheng Li (Plant Protection Institute of Hebei Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences) for providing the experimental fields and assisting with soil sampling. We thank Yali Fu and Guozhong Zhao (Shijiazhuang Academy of Agricultural Sciences) for providing seeds of the two cotton cultivars (SGK321 and Shiyuan321). We also thank Professor Reddy Palli (Department of Entomology, University of Kentucky) for paper amending. This research was supported by “973” project: “Basic research on outbreak mechanism and sustainable management for major agricultural pest insects” (No. 2006CB102006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100094, China

    Hai-Yan Hu, Xiao-Xia Liu, Zhang-Wu Zhao & Qing-Wen Zhang

  2. Department of Agro-microbial Resource and Utilization, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Hai-Yan Hu & Jian-Guang Sun

  3. Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Xing-Zhong Liu

  4. Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Yong Yu

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  1. Hai-Yan Hu
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  2. Xiao-Xia Liu
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Correspondence to Qing-Wen Zhang or Xing-Zhong Liu.

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Hu, HY., Liu, XX., Zhao, ZW. et al. Effects of repeated cultivation of transgenic Bt cotton on functional bacterial populations in rhizosphere soil. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 25, 357–366 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-008-9899-8

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