Arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and related soil microbial activity drive carbon mineralization in the maize rhizosphere

This research is aimed to investigate the effect of arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) fungi on soil microbial activity and carbon mineralization in the maize rhizosphere under potted condition. Glomus etunicatum was used for our experiment. Results showed that AM symbiosis increased the levels of microorganism in the maize rhizosphere soil, and enhanced activity of soil microbial enzymes. After inoculating AM fungi, the contents of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and readily oxidizable carbon (ROC) in the rhizosphere soil of maize increased with varying degrees. We obtained strong evidence that higher contents of MBC, DOC, ROC, superior number of microbes and stronger soil enzyme activities could be responsible for the higher rate of carbon mineralization in AM fungi treatment. AM fungi inoculation was confirmed to be effective to improve the soil quality for larger-scale ecoengineering.