Effects of lily/maize intercropping on rhizosphere microbial community and yield of Lilium davidii var. unicolor

Continuous cropping of lily (Lilium davidii var. unicolor) or any other crop seriously affects yield and quality. In this study, we compared continuous cropping with lily/maize intercropping. We also examined the lily rhizosphere microbes community in both sole lily cropping and lily/maize intercropping systems, by the llumina Miseq platform. Here we refer to data of recent years field experimentation of a lily/maize intercrop system in different planting configurations in the Gaolan Ecological and Agricultural Research Station. Treatments included sole crops of lily and maize, an intercrop consisting of strips of four lily rows alternating with one maize rows. The land equivalent ratio (LER) of intercrops was 1.294. The results showed that compared to sole cropping, the yield of lily in the first year of planting increased when lily was intercropped with maize. The species annotation of the high-throughput sequencing experiment showed that there was no difference in the diversity of the lily rhizosphere soil microbes on phylum taxonomic level, but the relative abundance of some genus changed obviously. The relative abundance of harmful fungus Fusarium spp. and, Funneliformis spp., decreased, and the relative abundance of beneficial bacteria Sphingomonas spp. and, Nitrospira spp., increased. In addition, we found that Lecanicillium spp., appeared only in the intercropping lily rhizosphere soil and sole cropping maize rhizosphere soil. In conclusion, the findings indicated that lily/maize intercropping could change soil microenvironment, and affect the diversity and structure of microorganism community in lily rhizosphere, with further beneficial effect on the yield of lily.