Fungal Community Composition and Diversity Across Soil Depths Under Different Cover Crop Treatments.

ABSTRACT: Fungi are a critical component of microbial biomass in agricultural soils, but their distribution across soil depths under different cover crops remains poorly understood. We used high-throughput sequencing of fungal ITS1 amplicons to characterize fungal communities across four soils depths (0-2, 2-4, 4-10, and 10-20 cm) in experimental field plots under four cover crop treatments: winter fallow reference (REF), cereal rye (CRYE), wild pennycress (WPEN), and a mixture of pea, crimson clover, radish, and oat (PCRO). There was no significant interaction between soil depth and cover crop treatment on both alpha diversity and beta diversity. CRYE and PCRO cover crops had low abundance of Fusarium, a genus including many important plant pathogens, and different fungal community compositi

SUBMITTER: Muturi EJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12941469 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature