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In conventional tea plantations, a large amount of pruned material returns to the soil surface, putting a high quantity of polyphenols into the soil. The accumulation of active allelochemicals in the tea rhizosphere and subsequent shift in beneficial microbes may be the cause of acidification, soil sickness, and regeneration problem, which may be attributed to hindrance of plant growth, development, and low yield in long-term monoculture tea plantation. However, the role of pruning leaf litter in soil sickness under consecutive tea monoculture is unclear. Here, we investigated soil samples taken from conventional tea gardens of different ages (2, 15, and 30 years) and under the effect of regular pruning. Different approaches including liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis of the leaf litter, metagenomic study of root-associated bacterial communities, and  in vitro  interaction of polyphenols with selected bacteria were applied to understand the effect of leaf litter-derived polyphenols on the composition and structure of the tea rhizosphere microbial community. Our results indicated that each pruning practice returns a large amount of leaf litter to each tea garden. LC-MS results showed that leaf litter leads to the accumulation of various allelochemicals in the tea rhizosphere, including  epigallocatechin gallate ,  epigallocatechin ,  epicatechin gallate ,  catechin , and  epicatechin  with increasing age of the tea plantation. Meanwhile, in the tea garden grown consecutively for 30 years (30-Y), the phenol oxidase and peroxidase activities increased significantly. Pyrosequencing identified  Burkholderia  and  Pseudomonas  as the dominant genera, while plant growth-promoting bacteria, especially  Bacillus ,  Prevotella , and  Sphingomonas , were significantly reduced in the long-term tea plantation. The qPCR results of 30-Y soil confirmed that the copy numbers of bacterial genes per gram of the rhizosphere soil were significantly reduced, while that of  Pseudomonas  increased significantly.  In vitro  study showed that the growth of catechin-degrading bacteria (e.g.,  Pseudomonas ) increased and plant-promoting bacteria (e.g.,  Bacillus ) decreased significantly with increasing concentration of these allelochemicals. Furthermore,  in vitro  interaction showed a 0.36-fold decrease in the pH of the broth after 72 h with the catechin degradation. In summary, the increase of  Pseudomonas  and  Burkholderia  in the 30-Y garden was found to be associated with the accumulation of catechin substrates. In response to the long-term monoculture of tea, the variable soil pH along with the litter distribution negatively affect the population of plant growth-promoting bacteria (e.g.,  Sphingomonas ,  Bacillus , and  Prevotella ). Current research suggests that the removal of pruned branches from tea gardens can prevent soil sickness and may lead to sustainable tea production.

frontiers in plant science

Soil Sickness in Aged Tea Plantation Is Associated With a Shift in Microbial Communities as a Result of Plant Polyphenol Accumulation in the Tea Gardens