作者简介:周开胜(1970—), 男, 安徽凤阳人,博士研究生,副教授,研究方向为土壤改良。E-mail:zks606@sina.com
采用厌氧土壤灭菌法(anaerobic soil disinfestation,ASD)改良西瓜连作土壤,旨在探讨ASD防治西瓜连作障碍的有效方法。室内试验土壤样品分别取自西瓜连作的旱田(一年中种植一季西瓜和一季其他旱作)和水田(一年中种植一季西瓜和一季水稻)。每类土壤分设5组处理:(1)对照(H1和S1,H代表旱田土,S代表水田土,下同),(2)淹水对照(H2和S2),(3)添加稻草粉末且淹水(H3和S3),(4)添加稻草粉末和硫黄粉且淹水(H4和S4),(5)添加稻草粉末和氨水且淹水(H5和S5)。每组分设15个平行样。各组土壤样品均放入塑料袋内,按上述方法添加物料混匀后,加水、扎口、密封,置于户外露天培养20 d。采用盆栽试验验证ASD改良西瓜连作退化土壤的效果。结果表明,ASD处理后,土样中NO-3-N 和 SO42-的含量显著( P<0.05)降低,土壤pH值较对照和淹水对照升高,有效地调节了土壤电导率(EC),尤其是土壤中致病尖孢镰刀菌( Fusarium oxysporum f. sp . niveum,FON)显著( P<0.05)受到抑制。盆栽试验表明,各组处理西瓜长势均好于对照,死亡率均低于对照,西瓜产量均高于对照。可见,ASD可以用来改良西瓜连作土壤,防治西瓜连作障碍。
Continuous cropping of watermelon has become increasingly common in China. However, yield and quality of watermelons are seriously affected by soil degradation caused by continuous cropping due to soil acidification and proliferation of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. niveum (FON). In the present study, anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) was used to treat soil samples collected from dry farmlands and paddy fields used annually for planting watermelons. Each soil category was divided into 5 groups, namely: (1) controls (H1, S1), (2) flooded controls (H2, S2), (3) flooded and incorporated rice straw alone (H3, S3), (4) flooded and incorporated rice straw with sulfur powder (H4, S4), and (5) flooded and incorporated rice straw and ammonia water (H5, S5). Each group had 15 replicates. The soil samples were then placed in plastic bags, mixed thoroughly, sealed, and incubated outdoors for 20 days. Pot experiment was then performed to test the effect of ASD by planting watermelon seedlings instead of grafting. Results showed that the NO-3-N and SO42- contents in soils were reduced significantly by ASD ( P<0.05), while the pH values of the soil were elevated. The EC values of the soil were effectively adjusted, and the soil-borne pathogenic FON was remarkably suppressed ( P<0.05). The mortality rate of the control group was 43.3%. The treated groups had better watermelon growth than the control group, and the watermelon yields of all the treated groups were higher than that of the control group. It was concluded that the ASD method could repair and improve degraded soil caused by continuous cropping.
Watermelon is one of the most important summer fruits and serves as a major source of income in some rural households in China. However, continuous cropping of watermelon often causes soil deterioration through soil acidification[1, 2], accumulation of allelochemicals[3, 4], nitrate nitrogen, sulfate radicals[5], and proliferation of soil-borne pathogen[4, 6]. In addition, some complications also occur[4] and seriously affect the sustainable development of watermelons. In watermelon production, lime is typically applied to ameliorate acidic soil[1], and organic fertilizer is also used to improve soil structure and quality[7]. Soil solarization[8], high-temperature greenhouse[9], chemical fumigation, and grafting[10, 11] are performed to suppress Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. niveum (FON), which can cause watermelon wilts. However, these methods basically fail to overcome the continuous cropping obstacles.
Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD), also called biological soil disinfestation or reductive soil disinfestation, according to the different emphasis in different countries[12], is a fast and efficient nonchemical and friendly method that can repair degraded soil[5] and is widely used and developed in Netherlands[13, 14, 15], Japan[12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21], United States[22, 23, 24, 25], and other countries[26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32] since the early 21st century. ASD is basically performed by adding organic materials to the soil and flooding and sealing to create a strong reductive soil environment. It has been shown able to effectively inhibit soil-borne pathogenic F. oxysporum in tomato, strawberry, banana, watermelon, and Artemisia selengensis[16, 19, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34]. With this method, the N
In this study, ASD was applied to treat watermelon continuous cropping soil to test its remediation effect, and possible material was selected to provide references for further application.
For laboratory test, soils were collected from paddy fields (used for watermelon and rice rotation annually) and dry farmlands (used for watermelon and other dry crop rotation annually) continuously planted with watermelon for more than 10 years in the village of Zhangxiang, Bengbu City, Anhui Province, China, at the beginning of July, 2013. The rice straws used in this study were also collected from the same village. The total nitrogen (TN) and total carbon (TC) contents in the rice straw were approximately 14.54 and 337.15 g kg-1, respectively. Sulfur powder and ammonia water were bought from the supply station of Huachang Chemical Procurement, Bengbu City, Anhui Province, China. Wasteland soil samples were collected from the campus of Bengbu University near the village of Zhangxiang at the end of April, 2013 and were tested at the beginning of May, 2013.
A pot experiment for watermelons was performed from the beginning of May, 2016 until the middle of August, 2016. The soil samples used in the pot experiment were collected from the watermelon test field of Bengbu University, where watermelons were continuously planted for more than 3 years.
1.2.1 Laboratory test
The soil samples were divided into 5 groups. Each sample amounted to 3 kg of dry soil weight and was treated as follows: (1) control (non-amended and non-flooded, H1 and S1, H and S referred to dry land and paddy field soils, respectively, the same as below); (2) flooded control (flooded but non-amended, H2 and S2); (3) flooded and incorporated rice straw in soil (H3 and S3, the dosage of rice straw amounted to 1% dry soil weight, the same as below); (4) flooded and incorporated rice straw with sulfur powder in soil (H4 and S4, the dosage of sulfur accounted for 0.1% dry soil weight); and (5) flooded and incorporated rice straw and ammonia water in soil (H5 and S5, the dosage of ammonia water was 300 mg· L-1, which referred to the content of NH3 amounted to dry soil weight). Each soil sample group had 15 replicates. Each soil sample was thoroughly mixed with the aforementioned design ratio and then placed in plastic bags. Pond water was added into the plastic bags, which were then sealed and incubated outdoors for 20 days. The wasteland soils were divided into 10 samples, which were then used for direct testing.
1.2.2 Pot experiment
The pot experiments were divided into 6 groups of incubated soils, and each group was further separated into 30 parallel samples. The weight of each soil sample was equivalent to approximately 3 kg of dry soil. The materials of each incubated group were incorporated with the following designs: (1) control (CK, non-amended and non-flooded); (2) flooded and incorporated with alfalfa powder in soil (1% Al, the dosage of alfalfa powder amounted to 1% dry soil weight); (3) flooded and incorporated acetic acid in soil (0.25% Ac, the ratio of acetic acid accounted for 0.25% of dry soil weight); (4) flooded and incorporated with ammonia in soil (0.25% AW, the rate of ammonia was equivalent to 0.25% of dry soil weight); (5) flooded and incorporated alfalfa powder with acetic acid in soil (1%Al + 0.25%Ac, the dosage of alfalfa powder and acetic acid amounted to 1% and 0.25% of dry soil weight, respectively); (6) flooded and incorporated alfalfa powder with ammonia in soil (1% Al+0.25% AW, the dosage of alfalfa powder and ammonia amounted to 1% and 0.25% of dry soil weight, respectively). Each soil sample was thoroughly mixed with the aforementioned design ratio and then placed in plastic bags. Water was added into plastic bags, which were sealed and incubated outdoors for 21 d. Ungrafted watermelon seedlings were planted after the soil was dried. The growth conditions of the watermelons were examined throughout the entire growing season to verify the effect of ASD on the soil used for watermelon continuous cropping.
A S220K pH meter (Mettler-Toledo International Inc., Shanghai, China) was used to measure soil pH in a 1:2.5 (m/V) ratio of soil to deionized water. Soil EC value was measured in a 1:5(m/V) ratio of soil to deionized water through a DDS-320 conductivity meter (Shanghai Great Temple Instrument Co., Ltd. Shanghai, China). The results were presented as the mean of 3 arbitrary samples from the 15 replicates of each treatment.
N
Beef extract peptone agar medium was used for growing soil-culturable bacteria. Gause's No. 1 medium was used to incubate soil-culturable actinomyces. Rose Bengal medium was used to incubate soil-culturable fungi[31], and improved Komada's culture medium was used for the growth of F. oxysporum[39]. The amount of soil-culturable microbes was counted by smearing-plate method and was incubated in a microbiological incubator at 35 ℃. The number of microbes was determined by counting the number of colony-forming units (CFU). The number of bacteria was counted after 2 d, and the number of actinomyces, fungi, and FON were all counted after 4 d of incubation.
SPSS 16.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA) and Microsoft Excel 2007 were used for statistical analysis. Independent-sample t-test was performed at the end of each assay, and differences with P values< 0.05 were considered significant.
2.1.1 Changes in soil pH and EC
The pH values in wasteland soil ranged from 6.0 to 6.5, while the EC values ranged from 0.026 to 0.770 mS· cm-1. Meanwhile, the pH values of the controls were all below 6.0, and the pH values of the treated soil samples (including the flooded controls) were all significantly (P< 0.05) higher than those of the controls (Fig. 1). The soil pH values of the samples with sulfur (H4 and S4) were lower than 6.5, whereas the soil pH values of other treatments (H2, S2, H3, S3, H5, and S5) were higher than 6.5 after 20 d. The pH values of the soil samples with ammonia water were higher than 7.5 after 20 d.
The EC values of H1 and S1 ranged from 0.131 to 0.195 mS· cm-1, and 0.094 to 0.132 mS· cm-1, respectively, which were higher than those of the flood controls (H2 and S2). The highest EC value was observed in the dry farmland soil samples with ammonia water (H5). After 20 d, the EC values of H3 and H4 were all lower than that of H1, while those of S4 and S5 were higher than those of S1 and other treated soil samples (Fig. 2). Thus, it was shown that compared to wasteland, continuous cropping of watermelon would reduce soil pH and cause minor changes in soil EC value.
2.1.2 N
N
The N
The highest S
2.1.3 Changes in culturable microbes in soil
The number of bacteria and actinomycetes ranged from 2.3× 108 to 7.0 × 108 CFU· g-1 and 0.47× 107 to 2.3× 107 CFU· g-1, respectively, in wasteland soils. The population of fungi and F. oxysporum ranged from 0.5× 105 to 2.7× 105 CFU· g-1 and 0.83× 104 to 5.33× 104 CFU· g-1, respectively, in wasteland soils. In dry farmland and paddy field soils with continuous cropping of watermelon, the number of bacteria was 108 CFU· g-1 in all soil samples after 20 d (Fig. 6). Meanwhile, all the populations of actinomycetes in all treatments decreased along with time except H1 and S1. The number of fungi was 105 CFU· g-1 in the controls (H1, S1) throughout the experiment, while the fungus populations in H2 and H3 ranged from 105 CFU· g-1 to 104 CFU· g-1, and the number of fungi in H4 and H5 ranged from 105 CFU· g-1 to 103 CFU· g-1. Similarly, the number of fungi in S2, S3, S4, and S5 ranged from 105 CFU· g-1 to 104 CFU· g-1 throughout the experiment. The number of FON in H1 and S1 were 105 CFU· g-1 and 104 CFU· g-1, respectively, during the experiment, yet the population of FON in H2, H3, H4, and H5 decreased from 105 CFU· g-1 to 103 CFU· g-1. Similarly, FON populations in S2, S3, S4 and S5 decreased from 104 CFU· g-1 to 103 CFU· g-1.
Compared to control (CK), the number of dead watermelons in various treated groups was lower, as well as the mortality rate (Fig. 7). Three groups with 0 mortality rate were observed, i.e. 1%Al, 0.25%Ac, and 1%Al+0.25%Ac. The mortality rates of 0.25%AW and 1%Al+0.25%AW groups were 3.3% and 6.6%, respectively. Meanwhile, the mortality rate of CK was 43.3%.
The watermelons in all the treated groups had better growth than those in the control. The water-melon yields of all the treated groups were higher than those of CK (Fig. 8), and the differences were significant (P< 0.05) for the treatment of 1%Al, 0.25%Ac and 1%Al+0.25%Ac.
Soil pH is one of the most important indicators of soil qualities and affects the formation, evolution, fertility, nutrient availability, crop growth, and microbial activity of soil[40]. Watermelon continuous cropping normally causes soil acidification[1, 2]. In this study, the soil pH values of the controls (H1 and S1) were less than 6.0, indicating that the soil was acidic according to Chinese soil pH classification standard[37]. Reports showed that soil acidification is unfavorable for general plant growth and microbial activity. It was shown that soil pH values of 6.0 in soil samples was attained by ASD treatment (Fig. 1). EC is another important index on physical and chemical properties of soil and can be indirectly used to reflect the relative content of water soluble ions (such as N
Field survey showed that watermelon was a class of high-input crop, with application amounts of urea and potassium sulfate of approximately 300 kg· hm-2 and 750 kg· hm-2, respectively, during the watermelon growing season under normal circumstances (this data was obtained by visiting local melon farmers). Many chemical fertilizers could cause the accumulation of nitrate nitrogen and sulfuric acid root in the soil, and consequently deteriorate the physical and chemical properties of soils, and especially could lead to soil acidification, hardening, decrease in soil fertility, and decline in agricultural output and qualities[35]. Although N
Current research has shown that acetic acid, propionic acid, and other volatile organic acids produced by organic materials decomposition[16, 17, 28, 30, 45], NH3 produced by ammoniation of rice straw and H2S produced by sulfur reduction[29] can inhibit soil-borne pathogens F. oxysporum[16, 28, 29, 30, 43]. The Fe2+ and Mn2+ ions produced under reductive conditions in the soil samples may be the induced factors that inhibit soil-borne F. oxysporum[19]. The suppressing effect on FON was confirmed by the experimental results in this study. The least number of FON was observed in the H5 and S5 treatments, followed by H4, S4, H3, S3 treatments. NH3 and H2S can effectively suppress FON, and this finding is consistent with the aforementioned mechanism underlying F. oxysporum inhibition[16, 17, 28, 29]. Studies have shown that the critical pathogenic concentration of F. oxysporum f. sp. cubense is 103 CFU· g-1[46], and the FON contents after ASD treatment decreased from 105 CFU· g-1 to 103 CFU· g-1 in dry farmland soil samples and from 104 CFU· g-1 to 103 CFU· g-1 in paddy field soil samples in the present study (Fig. 6). In addition, significant negative correlation between soil pH and number of FON was observed. The absolute values of the correlation coefficient between pH value and number of FON exceeded 0.80, and thus the elevated pH values were also observed to have an inhibitory effect on FON. Based on these results, the researchers found that ASD could effectively inhibit FON, whereas the content of soil-culturable bacteria showed nearly no change and maintained at the magnitudes of 108 CFU· g-1 in the soil samples throughout the experiment.
The pot experiment showed that the watermelon seedlings in various treated groups were more exuberant than those in the controls, and the yields of the watermelons in various treated groups were also higher than those in controls. These results were consistent with those of the laboratory test. Therefore, ASD method could be used to prevent and control complication of watermelon continuous cropping.
In conclusion, ASD could create strong anaerobic and reductive conditions. Soil pH could be adjusted from acidic to neutral, and EC values could also be altered due to the decrease in N
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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