Characterization of Soil Microorganism from Humus and Indigenous Microorganism Amendments

Umair Jan; Rui Feiwen; Jan Masood; Se Chul Chun

doi:10.1080/12298093.2020.1816154

Characterization of Soil Microorganism from Humus and Indigenous Microorganism Amendments

Mycobiology. 2020 Sep 16;48(5):392-398. doi: 10.1080/12298093.2020.1816154.

Authors

Umair Jan¹, Rui Feiwen², Jan Masood³, Se Chul Chun²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Systems Biotechnology, Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea.
² Department of Envrionmental Health Science, Konkuk University, Seoul, South Korea.
³ Department of Biological Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

This study was conducted to understand the dynamics of microbial communities of soil microorganisms, and their distribution and abundance in the indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) manipulated from humus collected from the forest near the crop field. The soil microorganisms originated from humus and artificially cultured microbial-based soil amendments were characterized by molecular and biochemical analyses. The bacterial population (2 × 10⁶∼13 × 10⁶ CFU/g sample) was approximately 100-fold abundant than the fungal population (2 × 10⁴∼8 × 10⁴ CFU/g sample). The 16S rDNA and ITS sequence analyses showed that the bacterial and fungal communities in humus and IMOs were mainly composed of Bacillus and Pseudomonas, and Trichoderma and Aspergillus species, respectively. Some of the bacterial isolates from the humus and IMOs showed strong inhibitory activity against soil-borne pathogenic fungi Fusarium oxysporum and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. These bacteria also showed the siderophore production activity as well as phosphate solubilizing activity, which are requisite traits for biological control of plant pathogenic fungi. These results suggest that humus and IMOs could be a useful resource for sustainable agriculture.

Keywords: Antifungal activity; biocontrol; indigenous microorganisms (IMO).