ISSN: 0973-7510
E-ISSN: 2581-690X
In the semi-arid Loess Plateau of northwestern China, the vegetation deterioration and soil degradation are very severe, and pines are large-scale planted for reforestation. In this study, the dynamics of ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungal communities in a chronosequence of 3, 7, 12, 25 and 55 year-old Pinus tabulaeformis plantations were investigated by denatured gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) based on fungal internal transcribed spacers of rDNA. A total of 21 DGGE bandtypes were successfully retrieved and sequenced after molecular cloning. The results indicated that they belonged to Ascomycota and Basidiomycota, accounting for 23.81% and 76.19% of the total, respectively. The dominant genus was Russula, followed by Suillus, and then Cortinarius, Tuber and Phialophora. The DGGE profiles of EM fungal communities changed with seasons as well as plantation ages, and redundancy analysis indicated that shifts in EM fungal community composition affected by soil chemical properties was smaller among plantation ages than among seasons.
Dynamics, Ectomycorrhizal fungi, Community, Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis, Pinus tabulaeformis, Loess Plateau
© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.