Shifts of the nirS and nirK denitrifiers in different land use types and seasons in the Sanjiang Plain, China

Abstract

Denitrification is a key nitrogen removal process that involves many denitrifying bacteria. In this study, the denitrification performance was estimated for soil samples from different land use types including farmland soil, restored wetland soil, and wetland soil. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction results showed that the average abundance of nirS and nirK genes was notably affected by seasonal changes, increasing from 2.34 × 10 ⁶ and 2.81 × 10 ⁶ to 1.97 × 10 ⁶ and 4.55 × 10 ⁶ gene copies/g of dry soil, respectively, from autumn to spring. This suggests that the abundance of nirS and nirK denitrifiers in spring is higher than those in autumn. Furthermore, the abundance of nirS and nirK genes was higher in the farmland soil than in restored wetland soil and wetland soil in both seasons. According to the analyses of MiSeq sequencing of nirS and nirK genes, Halobacteriaceae could be used as a special strain to distinguish wetland soil from farmland soil and restored wetland soil. Furthermore, redundancy analysis indicated that the soil environmental variables of total carbon, total nitrogen, moisture content, and organic matter were the main factors affecting the community structures of nirS and nirK denitrifiers existing in wetland soil. These findings could contribute to understanding the differences in nirS and nirK denitrifiers between different land use types during seasonal changes.

Keywords: denitrification; denitrifying bacteria; nirK; nirS; wetland.