Abstract

Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch is a widely cultivated traditional Chinese medicine plant. In the present study, culture-independent microbial diversity analysis and functional prediction of rhizosphere microbes associated with wild and cultivated G. uralensis Fisch plant (collected from two locations) were carried. Soil physicochemical parameters were tested to assess their impact on microbial communities. A total of 4428 OTUs belonging to 41 bacterial phyla were identified. In general, cultivated sample sites were dominated by Actinobacteria whereas wild sample sites were dominated by Proteobacteria. The alpha diversity analysis showed the observed species number was higher in cultivated soil samples when compared with wild soil samples. In beta diversity analysis, it was noticed that the weighted-unifrac distance of two cultivated samples was closer although the samples were collected from different regions. Functional annotation based on PICRUST and FAPROTAX showed that the nitrogen metabolism pathway such as nitrate reduction, nitrogen fixation, nitrite ammonification, and nitrite respiration were more abundant in rhizosphere microorganisms of wild G. uralensis Fisch. These results also correlate in redundancy analysis results which show correlation between NO3--N and wild samples, which indicated that nitrogen nutrition conditions might be related to the quality of G. uralensis Fisch.