Impact of land use and soil types on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity in tropical soil of India

A study was undertaken along land use gradients with different soil types in subtropical ecosystem of Northern India to evaluate the accurance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). The gradients was from natural land with forest tree, farmer’s field under chemically managed, farmer’s field under organically managed and Industrial wasteland with five different plant species. We investigate the total AMF species in land use system of different soil types and also in trap culture set from same land use system.Distribution of mycorrhizal species were calculated directly by quantification AMF spores and indirectly by sequencing the SSU-ITS and LSU regions of rDNA.  A total 19 AMF morphotypes from direct field sampling and additional 35 morphotypes from trap culture were recovered, which represented seven genera and eighteen species. Result suggested that few Rhizophagus and Funneliformis species came from organically managed and natural land; most of the species came from sites representing chemically managed and industrial wasteland sites from which Gigaspora and Scutellospora species were absent. Organically managed land contributed the largest number of AMF species and diversity, even more than those found in natural sites, which suggests that factors contributing to the diversity of AMF are indeed complex: For example, chemically managed sites not only causes loss of fungal biodiversity but also selectively favors smaller spores of genera Rhizophagus and Funneliformis.   Key words: Tillage, diversity, ribosomal dna, raised bed plantation, arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM), morphotypes.