Impact of land use history on the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity in arid soils of Argentinean farming fields.

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) is a key soil functional group, with an important potential to increase crop productivity and sustainable agriculture including food security. However, there is clear evidence that land uses, crop rotations and soil features affect the AMF diversity and their community functioning in many agroecosystems. So far, the information related to AMF biodiversity in ecosystems like the Argentine Puna, an arid-high plateau where plants experience high abiotic-stresses, are still scarce. In this work, we investigated morphological and molecular AMF diversity in soils of native corn, bean, and native potato Andean crops, under a familiar land use, in the Chaupi Rodeo (Jujuy, Argentina), without agrochemicals supplements but with different histories of crops rotation. Our results showed that AMF morphological diversity not only was high and variable among the three different crop soils but was also complemented by Illumina MiSeq data. The multivariate analyses highlighted that total fungal diversity is significantly affected by the preceding crop plants and the rotation histories, more than from the present crop species, while AMF communities are significantly affected by preceding crop only in combination with the effect of nitrogen and calcium soil concentration. This knowledge will give useful information on appropriate familiar farming.