Effects of Consecutively Monocultured Rehmannia glutinosa L. on Diversity of Fungal Community in Rhizospheric Soil

Continuous monoculture problems, or replanting diseases, are one of the key factors affecting productivity and quality of Chinese medicinal plants. The underlying mechanism is still being explored. Most of the studies on continuous monoculture of Rehmannia glutinosa L. are focused on plant nutritional physiology, root exudate, and its autotoxicity. However, the changes in the diversity of microflora in the rhizosphere mediated by the continuous monoculture pattern have been remained unknown. In this study, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) technique was used for fingerprinting fungal diversity in the rhizosphere soil sampled from the fields of R. glutinosa monocultured for 1 and 2 yr. The results showed that the structure of fungal community in consecutively moncultured rhizosphere soil was different from that in control soil (no cropping soil), and varied with the consecutive monoculture years (1 and 2 yr). The comprehensive evaluation index (D) of fungal community estimated by principal component analysis of fragment number, peak area, Shannon-Weiner index, and Margalef index was higher in 1 yr monoculture soil than that in 2 yr monoculture soil, suggesting that consecutive monoculture of R. glutinosa could be a causative agent to decrease the diversity of fungal community in the rhizosphere soil.