Diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi under different agricultural practices in Loess Plateau in China

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) widely distributes in the cropland system, and plays an important role in soil structure maintenance and nutrition absorption. Agriculture practices such as tillage, fertilizer and crop rotation can easily affected AM fungi. In the present study, soil samples from different agricultural farming practices, including tillage (T), no-tillage (NT), tillage + stubble return (TS) and no-tillage + stubble return (NTS) in the field of the Loess Plateau were collected in summer and winter to analysis the biodiversity of AMF. The results showed that 12 AM fungal species belonging to 4 genera were isolated and identified in summer soil samples. Specifically, there were 8 Glomus, 1 Diversispora, 2 Gigaspora, 1 Scutellospora species. Eleven AM fungal species belonging to 3 genera were isolated and identified in winter soil samples and all these 11 AM fungal species had been present in soil samples. Glomus was the most dominant genera across the treatments and G. aggregatum, G. caledonium and G. gigantea were the most dominant species both in summer and winter soils of the all treatments. AM fungi diversity decreased in the following order NT>NTS>TS>T. Farming practices and season could have significant impacts on AMF diversity.