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Morel Production Related to Soil Microbial Diversity and Evenness.

ABSTRACT: Black morel is a widely prized ascomycetous mushroom with culinary value. It was once uncultivable but can now be cultivated routinely in ordinary farmland soils. Large-scale morel farming sometimes encounters nonfructification for unknown reasons. In spring 2020, many morel farms in the area of Chengdu-Plain, China, exhibited no fructification at all, causing disastrous economic loss to the farmers. To determine potential ecological factors associated with the different performance of morel production in these farms, 21 affected sites versus 11 sites with normal fructification performance were analyzed to compare soil microbiota and physiochemical characteristics during fructification. The results indicated that soil physiochemical characteristics were unlikely to be a major reason for the difference between successful fructification and nonfructification. The soils with successful fructification had significantly higher diversity in both the fungal and bacterial communities than those with nonfructification. Morel yield was positively correlated with the α-diversity of fungal communities. The higher diversity of the successfully fructified soils was contributed by community evenness rather than taxonomic richness. In contrast, most nonfructification soils were dominated by a high proportion of a certain fungal genus, typically Acremonium or Mortierella, in the fungal communities. Our findings demonstrate the importance of microbial ecology to the large-scale agroindustry of soil-cultivated mushrooms. IMPORTANCE Saprotrophic mushrooms cultivated in soils are subject to complex influences from soil microbial communities. Research on growing edible mushrooms has revealed connections between fungi and a few species of growth-promoting bacteria colonizing the mycosphere. The composition and diversity of the whole microbial community may also have an influence on the growth and production of soil-saprotrophic mushrooms. Morel mushrooms (Morchella spp.) are economically and culturally important and are widely prized throughout the world. This study used the large-scale farming of morels as an example of an agroecosystem for soil-saprotrophic mushroom cultivation. It demonstrated a typical pattern of how the microbial ecology in soil agroecosystems, especially the α-diversity level and community evenness among soil fungal taxa, could affect the production of high-value cash crops and the income of farmers.

SUBMITTER: Tan H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8515941 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The black morel Morchella sextelata (Morchellaceae, Pezizales) is a valuable edible mushroom that can be cultivated on a large scale, but a severe yield decline is observed during continuous cropping. The effect of long-term cropping on soil-borne diseases and the dysbiosis of the microbiome and how these biotic factors affect the morel yield are not well understood. To help fill this knowledge gap, we designed an indoor experiment to investigate the influence of black morel cropping regimes on soil physicochemical properties, richness and distribution of fungal community, and morel primordial production. In this study, we employed rDNA metabarcoding and microbial network analysis to evaluate the effect of non-continuous and continuous cropping regimes on the fungal community during three developmental stages of black morel production, namely, the bare soil mycelium, mushroom conidial, and primordial stages. The results showed that during the first year, M. sextelata mycelium overwhelmed the resident soil fungal community by reducing the alpha diversity and niche breadth of soil fungal patterns by a greater amount compared to the continuous cropping regime, leading to high crop yield of 12.39 ± 6.09/quadrat but less complex soil mycobiome. To sustain continuous cropping, exogenous nutrition bags and morel mycelial spawn were consecutively added to the soil. The additional nutrient input stimulated the growth of fungal saprotrophic decomposers. The degrading activity of soil saprotrophs, including M.sextelata, caused a significant increase in soil nutrient content. This led to an inhibitory effect on the formation of morel primordia, resulting in a sharp decline to 0.29 ± 0.25/quadrat and 0.17 ± 0.24/quadrat, respectively, in the final morel cropping. Our findings provided a dynamic overview of the soil fungal community during morel mushroom production, allowing us to identify beneficial and detrimental fungal taxa in the soil mycobiome involved in morel cultivation. The information acquired from this study can be applied to mitigate the adverse impact of continuous cropping on the yield of black morel.

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Morel Production Related to Soil Microbial Diversity and Evenness.

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