Shifts from conventional horticulture to agroecology impacts soil fungal diversity in Central Argentina

GRILLI, GABRIEL; COFRÉ, NOELIA; MARRO, NICOLÁS; VIDELA, MARTÍN; URCELAY, CARLOS

MYCOLOGICAL PROGRESS

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

Lugar: HEIDELBERG; Año: 2023 vol. 22

1617-416X

Conventional agriculture generally relies on monocultures and external inputs, such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides,which not only impact on farmer’s economy and health, but also lead to a reduction of soil biodiversity. The agroecologicalmanagement is constituted by a series of alternative strategies that seek to increase the biodiversity of agroecosystems andrely on the ecosystem services that it provides. Fungi are key components in ecosystems, but few studies have examinedhow the agroecology afects soil fungal composition. Using meta-genomic tools, we studied the taxonomic and functionalcomposition of fungi in soils subjected to conventional horticulture (CH) and transition to agroecology (TA) (7–10 years old),which mainly difer because the latter does not use synthetic agrochemicals and generally includes accompanying vegetation.We found that these crop soils were dominated by Ascomycota, in particular Sordariomycetes. The average taxonomic richness and the fungal guild abundance at the local scale did not difer between managements. The TA led to higher abundanceand richness of soil fungi than CH at the regional scale, but the PERMANOVA revealed non-signifcant diferences in thefungal community composition. These results could be explained by the number of years elapsed since the implementationof the TA management that might have not been sufcient to have a profound impact on the fungal communities and/or thepersistence of relict DNA in soils that mask possible diferences between managements. The diferences observed at theregional scale may possibly be observed at the local scale in longer-term studies.