The Influence Mechanism of Cultivated Soil Cd Pollution on Soil Bacterial Community

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Abstract
Soil pollution with cadmium (Cd) poses a significant threat to the global natural environment, negatively impacting soil health and food security, particularly in China. Cd pollution influences bacterial communities directly and indirectly by altering soil physicochemical properties, including pH, soil particle size (SPS), moisture content (MC), organic matter (OM), available phosphorus (AP), available potassium (AK), total nitrogen (TN), catalase activity (SC), phosphatase activity (SP), urease activity (SU), and concentrations of heavy metals such as copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni), and zinc (Zn). In this study, 50 farmlands were randomly selected in J County, eastern China. High-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing was employed to analyze the soil bacterial community structure and its relationship with various environmental factors across different levels of Cd pollution. The results indicated: (1) Sobs and Chao (bacterial community richness indexes), along with Shannon and Invsimpson (bacterial diversity indexes), were significantly higher in severely Cd-polluted soil compared to moderately polluted soil. (2) In moderately polluted cultivated land, nine bacterial phyla exhibited strong transfer and absorption functions for Ni and Hg, while three genera were positively correlated with Cr and Ni. Conversely, in severely polluted soil samples, the relative abundances of 11 bacterial phyla and four genera showed significant positive correlations with Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn. (3) The functional abundance of bacterial communities in severely Cd-polluted environments was significantly greater than that in moderately polluted ones, at a significance level of p<0.05. These results indicate the presence of heavy metal-tolerant bacteria in Cd-polluted soils.

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