Analysis of rhizosphere fungal community of agricultural crops cultivated in laboratory experiments on Chernevaya taiga soil

Chernevaya taiga in Western Siberia, Russia, is a special environment with fertile soil, extraordinarily high herbaceous plant sizes, and incredibly quick rates of plant residues breakdown. We postulated that a unique rhizospheric fungal community would be created when growing crops on chernevaya soil, which has never been used for agriculture. These may be the source for the novel effective biostimulator and biocontrol fungal agents for modern agriculture. In this study, we analyzed the fungal communities in the rhizosphere of spring wheat and radish cultivated in greenhouse experiments on chernevaya and control soils using high-throughput ITS sequencing. Additionally reprehensive fungal strains were isolated and examined for the stimulation of wheat seedlings growth. The research shows that Ascomycota and Mortierellomycota were the most abundant phyla in the rhizospheric fungal community, mainly composed of Mortierella species. The control soils were abundant in Mucoromycota, represented mostly by Mucor and Umbelopsis. Potentially plant-pathogenic fungi Fusarium and Oidiodendron were found only in the rhizosphere of crops grown in the control soil. Whereas plants grown on chernevaya soil have a wide variety of possible biocontrol fungi. Novel fungal isolates demonstrated stimulating effect on the growth and biomass accumulation of wheat seedlings. The findings of the study imply that the creation of biorational products for crop growth and protection may depend on the taxonomic composition analysis of the rhizospheric mycobiota of the crops growing on the soil with the unique characteristics.