TITLE:
Survey of Annual and Seasonal Fungal Communities in Japanese Prunus mume Orchard Soil by Next-Generation Sequencing
AUTHORS:
Yoshinao Aoki, Keiko Fujita, Hiroyuki Shima, Shunji Suzuki
KEYWORDS:
Fungal Community Structure, Japanese Prunus mume Orchard, Next-Generation Sequencing, Operational Taxonomic Unit, Soil Microorganism
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Microbiology,
Vol.5 No.13,
December
3,
2015
ABSTRACT: Fungi play a vital role
in the management of soil environment. Although various fungal communities are
found in soil, it is difficult to determine the fungal community structure in
soil. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive survey of fungal communities
in Japanese Prunus mume orchard soil from
2010 to 2012 growing seasons using next-generation sequencing technology. Fungal
DNA was directly extracted from the soil samples and the internal transcribed
spacer 1 region was amplified by PCR and sequenced. We identified 34,826 fungal
clone sequences from the soil samples. The fungal clones were sorted into 2132
operational taxonomic units and a majority of the discriminated clone sequences
were classified as Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. The number of fungal
species belonging to Ascomycota showed increases in June in the three growing seasons. That belonging to Glomeromycota showed increases in August in the three growing seasons. As Ascomycota fungi are wood decomposers and
saprotrophs, the results suggested that the number of plant pathogenic fungi
increased in Japanese P. mume orchard
soil in June. These findings show for the first time the annual and seasonal
fungal community structures in Japanese P.
mume orchard soil, and are expected to provide valuable clues for
improvement when planting new P. mume trees in Japanese orchards.