SOIL MICROBIAL COMMUNITY CHANGE DURING NATURAL FOREST CONVERSION TO RUBBER PLANTATIONS

Extensive conversion of natural forest to monoculture rubber plantation in Xishuangbannan. It is the 'non-traditional' rubber plantation areas in southwest (SW) of China has resulted in the soil microbial community change. The aim of our study was to identify the impacts of conversion of natural forests into rubber plantations on soil microorganisms. Soil microbial community from 10 old years rubber plantation (10aRP), 20 old years rubber plantation (20aRP), 30 old years rubber plantation (30aRP), Lower hill seasonal rainforest (LRF) and tropical ravine rainforest (RRF) were analysed by Illumina MiSeq technology. The results showed that changes in soil physical and chemical properties were strongly correlated with available phosphorus (AP), total nitrogen (TN), available potassium (AK) and total potassium (TP) which were lower in natural forests than in rubber plantations. And the dominant phylum were Acidobacteria (44.67%), Proteobacteria(13.92%), Chloroflexi (13.13%), Verrucomicrobia (9.99%) and Planctomycetes (5.23%) in 45 soil microbial communities. Microbial community in rubber plantations were less abundant than in natural forests. In addition, TP, AK, TN and AN were the main environmental factors which affected soil microbial composition. The soil health of rubber plantations were impacted by soil bacterial community.