Soil bacterial community as impacted by addition of rice straw and biochar

The application of straw and biochar can effectively improve soil quality, but whether such application impacts paddy soil bacterial community development remains to be clarified. Herein, the impacts of three different field amendment strategies were assessed including control (CK) treatment, rice straw (RS) application (9000 kg ha^-1), and biochar (BC) application (3150 kg ha^-1). Soil samples were collected at five different stages of rice growth, and the bacterial communities therein were characterized via high-throughput 16S rDNA sequencing. The results of these analyses revealed that soil bacterial communities were dominated by three microbial groups (Chloroflexi, Proteobacteria and Acidobacteria). Compared with the CK samples, Chloroflexi, Actinobacteria, Nitrospirae and Gemmatimonadetes levels were dominated phyla in the RS treatment, and Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Nitrospirae and Patescibacteria were dominated phyla in the BC treatment. Compared with the RS samples, Chloroflexi, Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Verrucomicrobia levels were increased, however, Proteobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Nitrospirae, and Firmicute levels were decreased in the BC samples. Rhizosphere soil bacterial diversity rose significantly following RS and BC amendment, and principal component analyses confirmed that there were significant differences in soil bacterial community composition among treatment groups when comparing all stages of rice growth other than the ripening stage. Relative to the CK treatment, Gemmatimonadaceae, Sphingomonadaceae, Thiovulaceae, Burkholderiaceae, and Clostridiaceae-1 families were dominant following the RS application, while Thiovulaceae and uncultured-bacterium-o-C0119 were dominant following the BC application. These findings suggest that RS and BC application can improve microbial diversity and richness in paddy rice soil in Northeast China.