Soil microbial diversity of peri-urban agricultural field and riverbank along Yamuna river in Delhi, India

Abstract

Soil microbes play an important role in the earth’s ecosystem; variations in any environmental factor would have a great impact on microbial function and diversity. Yamuna river is regarded as one of the most polluted rivers in India. It is a major source of water for household and agricultural practices in Delhi and its national capital territory regions. In the present work, we studied the physic-chemical properties and soil microbial diversity in riverbanks and agricultural field along the Yamuna river. Physicochemical properties indicate the soil quality of the two distinct soil sites and correlation analysis showed that these are the key factors responsible for shift in soil bacterial community. Characterization of soil microbial community was done. Sequence analysis showed that both riverbank soil and field soil harbor microbial community with variation in their relative abundance. Proteobacteria is the dominating bacterial community in both riverbanks (70.03%) and agricultural field soil (56.41%) while Bacteroidetes (38.39%) in riverbank soil and Actinobacteria (11.3%) in agricultural field soil. Field soil also harbors some specific group of bacteria, i.e., Actinomycetes and Cyanobacteria. Bioinformatics and statistical analysis showed that bacterial community was found to be significantly different in two soil environments and mainly driven by climatic conditions and concentration of pollutant. Our work provides insight into soil quality, microbial community, and phylogenetic turnover under different soil conditions in polluted areas.