Effect of different ferric fertilizers on planting Morchella conica fruiting yields and analyses of the microflora and bioactivities of its grown soil

The aims of this study were to determine whether six ferric fertilizers influence the development of fruit bodies of Morchella conica identified by analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS), its grown soil microflora and enzymatic activities. We successfully cultivated one kind of Morchella in the wheat planting field, its partial ITS rDNA in the present study was identified as M. conica by GenBank and Morchella MLST database as a reference. Six ferric fertilizers were applied to the planting area. Four soil enzymatic activities (including soil urease, polyphenol oxidase, invertase, and protease) as well as soil microflora showed significant differences in the development stages of M. conica especially during the primordium differentiation stage. Results suggest that ferric fertilizer not only influenced the Morchella grown soil enzymatic activities and microorganisms, but also increased the Morchella yields while such effects differ from the species of the ferric fertilizer, especially groups with ammonium ferric sulfate [NH4Fe(SO4)2.12H2O], Fe·EDDHA and Tongfeng nutrients. So, this work highlights the importance of further attempts to resolve important aspects of the morel commercial cultivation regarding optimizing nutrition plan and figuring out the relationships between genotypes and their fertilities of fruiting body.