Long-term continuously monocropped peanut significantly changed the abundance and composition of soil bacterial communities.

: Soil sickness is the progressive loss of soil quality due to continuous monocropping. The bacterial populations are critical to sustaining agroecosystems, but their responses to long-term peanut monocropping have not been determined. In this study, based on a previously constructed gradient of continuous monocropped plots, we tracked the detailed feedback responses of soil bacteria to short- and long-term continuous monocropping of four different peanut varieties using high-throughput sequencing techniques. The analyses showed that soil samples from 1- and 2-year monocropped plots were grouped into one class, and samples from the 11- and 12-year plots were grouped into another. Long-term consecutive monocropping could lead to a general loss in bacterial diversity and remarkable changes in bacterial abundance and composition. At the genera level, the dominant genus Bacillus changed in average abundance from 1.49% in short-term monocropping libraries to 2.96% in the long-term libraries. The dominant species Bacillus aryabhattai and Bacillus funiculus and the relatively abundant species Bacillus luciferensis and Bacillus decolorationis all showed increased abundance with long-term monocropping. Additionally, several other taxa at the genus and species level also presented increased abundance with long-term peanut monocropping; however, several taxa showed decreased abundance. Comparing analyses of predicted bacterial community functions showed significant changes at different KEGG pathway levels with long-term peanut monocropping. Combined with our previous study, this study indicated that bacterial communities were obviously influenced by the monocropping period, but less influenced by peanut variety and growth stage. Some bacterial taxa with increased abundance have functions of promoting plant growth or degrading potential soil allelochemicals, and should be closely related with soil remediation and may have potential application to relieve peanut soil sickness. A decrease in diversity and abundance of bacterial communities, especially beneficial communities, and simplification of bacterial community function with long-term peanut monocropping could be the main cause of peanut soil sickness.