425
ISSN 0026-2617, Microbiology, 2018, Vol. 87, No. 3, pp. 425–436. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2018.
Community Structure of Rhizomicrobiomes in Four Medicinal Herbs
and Its Implication on Growth Management
1, 2
S. Shi
a,
3
, L. Tian
a, b, 3
, L. Ma
a, b
, and C. Tian
a,
*
a
Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, 130102 China
b
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049 China
*e-mail: tiancj@neigae.ac.cn
Received September 12, 2017
Abstract⎯Medicinal plants are the basic materials of traditional Chinese medicine. Soil characteristics and
microbial contribution play important roles in the growth and product quality of medicinal plants, but the
link between them in the rhizosphere of medicinal plants has been overlooked. Accordingly, Mentha haploc-
alyx, Perilla frutescens, Glycyrrhiza uralensis, and Astragalus membranaceus, four plants used in traditional
Chinese medicines, were investigated in this study in order to elucidate bacterial and arbuscular mycorrhizal
fungal (AMF) diversity in the rhizosphere and its possible association with soil quality. DGGE-based 16S
rRNA and 18S rRNA gene sequencing results indicated that the diversity of both bacteria and AMF in Gly-
cyrrhiza uralensis and Astragalus membranaceus was significantly higher than those in Mentha haplocalyx and
Perilla frutescens, suggesting that medicinal plants have different preferences even under the same conditions.
In addition, enzymatic activities and nutrition were enhanced in the rhizospheric soil of Mentha haplocalyx
and Perilla frutescens, and the correlation among AMF diversity, soil enzymatic activities and nutrition was
confirmed using RDA analysis. These results suggest the potential to grow medicinal plants with a reasonable
rotation or intercrop in order to maintain long-term continuous soil development.
Keywords: medicinal plant, rhizosphere, microbial community, PCR-DGGE, enzymatic activities, environ-
mental variable
DOI: 10.1134/S0026261718030098
It is well known that traditional Chinese medicine
significantly contributes to worldwide medical devel-
opment (Kong and Tan, 2015; Chang, 2016), such as
the Chinese medicine discovered by Dr. Youyou Tu
and her colleagues to cure malaria. The present devel-
opment of Chinese medicine is based on medicinal
plants, but the increases in population size and natural
resource consumption have reduced the availability of
wild medicinal herbs (Normile, 2003). For sustainable
production in Chinese medicine, it is necessary to
properly plant medical herbs and maintain a healthy
soil ecosystem. In fact, the microbes in the rhizo-
sphere of medicinal herbs, especially pathogenic
microbes, may have negative effects on the growth and
production of plants during continuous cropping,
which may ultimately result in quality degradation in
medicinal herbs (Zhang, G.Z. and Zhang, H.W.,
2007; Gao et al., 2014). For example, as reported, con-
tinuously growing ginseng in the same field could
increase the amount of pathogenic fusarium in the
rhizosphere, which could destroy healthy ginseng
roots (Punja et al., 2008). Therefore, determining the
microbial community and diversity in the rhizosphere
of medicinal plants is of great significance in manag-
ing the growth of medicinal herbs. In addition, it has
been found that the significant difference in the num-
ber of rhizospheric microbial groups between plants is
quite dependent on various environmental factors
(Söderberg et al., 2002), which provides a theoretical
basis for a healthy herb planting system.
The rhizosphere is the place where plants exchange
nutrients with the soil, and all kinds of bacteria and
fungi, including some symbiotic AMF, are found in
the rhizosphere (Fierer and Jackson, 2006; Verbrug-
gen et al., 2013). The rhizospheric microbes of medic-
inal herbs are closely related to the growth, reproduc-
tion and metabolic activity of host plants. Therefore,
the study of the relationship between medicinal herbs
and rhizospheric microbial communities is of great
significance. Bacteria account for the majority of the
rhizospheric microbial community in medicinal
herbs; thus, bacteria are dominant in the microbial
system (Qin et al., 2012) and play important roles in
nutrient exchange and metabolism in the soil ecosys-
1
The article is published in the original.
2
Supplementary materials are available for this article
at 10.1134/S0026261718030098 and are accessible for authorized
users.
3
S. Shi and L. Tian contribute equally to this work.
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