Soil-microbial communities indexing from mangroves rhizophere and barren sandy habitats

Publication date: Available online 19 September 2018Source: Physiological and Molecular Plant PathologyAuthor(s): Kandasamy Saravanakumar, Kandasamy Kathiresan, Davoodbasha MubarakAli, Kasinathan Kayalvizhi, Narayanasamy Rajendran, Sreenivasan Hemalatha, Vijai Kumar Gupta, Jie ChenAbstractThis work assessed the role of mangrove vegetation on soil characteristics of mangrove sediment and barren sandy soil in order to assess the impact of mangrove vegetation on coastal soil. The soil samples were obtained from three sites (natural mangroves, planted mangroves and non-mangrove sandy shore) located in Vellar-coleroon estuarine complex for four seasons at three different soil depths (0–10, 10–50 and 50–100 cm). The samples were analyzed for microbial counts, nutrients and trace elements. The total fungal count was 42.5-fold higher in natural mangrove sediment than sandy soil as against the total heterotrophic bacterial count which was only 1.9-fold higher. Notably, planted mangrove sediment had higher total organic carbon, microbial carbon, N, P and K than the sandy soil. There was a significant correlation between soil temperature and microbial counts revealing that the temperature rise may be favorable for soil biosphere such as heterotrophs, saprophytes and parasites. Remarkably, boron, cadmium and cobalt were many folds greater in the natural mangrove sediments than that in planted mangrove sediment. This work has suggested that an amendment of sandy soil with nutrient...
Source: Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology - Category: Molecular Biology Source Type: research