Yinsheng He

Codonopsis tangshen, a perennial herbaceous, has been shown to be affected by continuous cropping, with significant decline in both yield and quality. In this study, we studied the effect of continuous cropping on the abundance and composition of rhizospheric soil bacterial community. Results showed that continuous cropping causes a significant decline in both yield and quality. The nutrient content in continuous cropping soil was higher than that of soil in main cropping. Pyrosequencing analyses revealed Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria as the main phyla in two types of soils. Relative abundance of Acidobacteria, Nitrospirae, TM7, and AD3 phyla was observed to be high in continuous cropping soils, whereas Chloroflexi, Bacteroidetes, and Planctomycetes phyla were richer in main cropping soils. At the genus level, high relative abundance of Pseudomonas (γ-Proteobacteria), Rhodanobacter, Candidatus Koribacter, and Candidatus were observed in continuous cropping soil. Different patterns of bacterial community structure were observed between different soils. Redundancy analysis indicated that organic matter content and available nitrogen content exhibited the strongest effect on bacterial community structure in the continuous cropping soil. Taken together, continuous cropping led to a significant decline in yield and quality, decrease in rhizospheric soil bacterial abundance, and alteration of rhizospheric soil microbial community structure, thereby resulting in poor growth of C. tangshen in the continuous cropping system.