The dynamics of rhizosphere microbial communities is important for plant health and productivity, and can be influenced by soil type, plant species or genotype, and plant growth stage. A pot experiment was carried out to examine the dynamics of microbial communities in the rhizosphere of two soybean genotypes grown in a black soil in Northeast China with a long history of soybean cultivation. The two soybean genotypes, Beifeng 11 and Hai 9731, differing in productivity were grown in a mixture of black soil and siliceous sand. The bacterial communities were compared at three zone locations including rhizoplane, rhizosphere, and bulk soil at the third node （V3）, early flowering （R1）, and early pod （R3） stages using polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis （PCR-DCGE） of 16S rDNA. The results of principal component analyses （PCA） showed that the bacterial community structure changed with growth stage. Spatially, the bacterial communities in the rhizoplane and rhizosphere were significantly different from those in the bulk soil. Nevertheless, the bacterial communities in the rhizoplane were distinct from those in the rhizosphere at the V3 stage, while no obvious differences were found at the R1 and R3 stages. For the two genotypes, the bacterial community structure was similar at the V3 stage, but differed at the R1 and R3 stages. In other words, some bacterial populations became dominant and some others recessive at the two later stages, which contributed to the variation of the bacterial community between the two genotypes. These results suggest that soybean plants can modify the rhizosphere bacterial communities in the black soil, and there existed genotype-specific bacterial populations in the rhizospbere, which may be related to soybean productivity.
JIN JianWANG Guang-HuaLIU Xiao-BingLIU Jii-DongCHEN Xue-LiS. J. HERBERT
