Background: Rainfed agriculture plays key role in ensuring food security and maintain ecological balance. Especially in developing areas, most grain food are produced rainfed agricultural ecosystem. Therefore, the increase of crop yields in rainfed agricultural ecosystem becomes vital as well as ensuring global food security.Methods: The potential roles of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in improving crop yields under rainfed condition were explored based on 546 pairs of observations published from 1950 to 2021.Results: AMF inoculation increased 23.0% crop yields based on 13 popular crops under rainfed condition. Not only was crop biomass of shoot and root increased 24.2% and 29.6% by AMF inocula, respectively but also seed number and pod/fruit number per plant were enhanced markedly. Further, the effect of AMF on crop yields depended on different crop groups. AMF improved more yield of N-fixing crops than non-N-fixing crops. The effect of AMF changed between grain and non-grain crops with the effect size of 0.216 and 0.352, respectively. AMF inoculation enhances stress resistance and photosynthesis of host crop in rainfed agriculture.Conclusion: AMF increased crop yields by enhancing shoot biomass due to the improvement of plant nutrition, photosynthesis, and stress resistance in rainfed field. Our findings provide a new view for understanding the sustainable productivity in rainfed agroecosystem, which enriched the theory of AMF functional diversity. This study provided a theoretical and technical way for sustainable production under rainfed agriculture.

This article presents a comprehensive subpixel water mapping algorithm to automatically produce routinely open water fraction maps in the Tibetan Plateau (TP) with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). A multi-index threshold endmember extraction method was applied to select the endmembers from MODIS images. To incorporate endmember variability, an endmember selection strategy, called the combined use of typical and neighboring endmembers, was adopted in multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA), which can assure a robust subpixel water fractions estimation. The accuracy of the algorithm was assessed at both the local scale and regional scale. At the local scale, a comparison using the eight pairs of MODIS/Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) water maps demonstrated that subpixels water fractions were well retrieved with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 7.86% and determination coefficient (R²) of 0.98. At the regional scale, the MODIS water fraction map in October 2014 matches well with the TP lake data set and the Global Lake and Wetland Database (GLWD) in both latitudinal and longitudinal distribution. The lake area estimation is more consistent with the reference TP lake data set (difference of −3.15%) than the MODIS Land Water Mask (MOD44W) (difference of −6.39%).

(1) Background: environmental gradient strongly affects microbial biodiversity, but which factors drive the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) associated with roots at relatively large spatial scales requires further research; (2) Methods: an experiment on large spatial scales of Mt. Taibai was conducted to explore the biodiversity and drivers of AMF-associated with roots using high-throughput sequencing; (3) Results: a total of 287 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) belong to 62 species representing 4 identified and 1 unclassified order were identified along different altitudinal gradients. With increasing altitude, AMF colonization could be simulated by a quadratic function trend, and altitude has a significant impact on colonization. AMF alpha diversity, including the Sobs and Shannon indexes, tended to be quadratic function trends with increasing altitude. The highest diversity indices occurred at mid-altitudes, and altitude had a significant effect on them. AMF communities have different affinities with soil and root nutrient, and Glomus is most affected by soil and root nutrient factors through the analysis of the heatmap. Glomus are the most dominant, with an occurrence frequency of 91.67% and a relative abundance of 61.29% and 53.58% at the level of species and OTU, respectively. Furthermore, AMF diversity were mostly associated with soil and root nutrients; (4) Conclusions: in general, AMF molecular diversity is abundant in Mt. Taibai, and altitude and nutrient properties of soil and root are the main influencing factors on AMF diversity and distribution.

Background: There is a critical need to examine whether mining of molybdenum (Mo) ore will affect Mo absorption and translocation by plants at a community level. Methods: Indigenous plants and their rhizospheric soil (0–20 cm) growing in two different areas including the mining and the unexploited areas were collected from the Luanchuan Mo mine—one of the largest Mo mines in Asia. The concentrations of Mo and other heavy metals of plants or soil were measured by ICP-AES. Mo absorption and translocation in plants growing in two areas were investigated and compared. Heavy metal pollution in soil was also evaluated by the potential ecological hazard index method. Results: Mo concentration in mining soils was higher with the changes from 108.13 to 268.13 mg kg⁻¹ compared to unexploited area. Mo concentrations in shoots and roots of plants growing in the mining area were also significant higher than those growing in the unexploited area with 2.59 and 2.99 times, respectively. The Mo translocation factor of plants growing in the unexploited area was 1.61, which reached 1.69 times that of plants growing in the mining area. Mo was the main heavy metal pollutant in the soil of both the mining and the unexploited areas. Conclusion: Mining of Mo had changed not only the Mo concentration in soil but also Mo absorption and translocation in plants. Plants growing in the mining area absorbed more Mo from the soil but translocated relatively less to shoots than plants of the unexploited area. However, the mechanisms of Mo absorption and translocation of plants in mining area should be further studied in the future.

Rising food demand has led to heavy use of chemical fertilizers, which are costly and pose serious threats to soil health and the environment. This two-year field study evaluated whether integrating beneficial bacteria with reduced nitrogen (N) fertilizer could improve soil health, wheat productivity, and N use efficiency (NUE), thereby reducing dependence on chemical N inputs. Nine treatments were tested, including combinations of no N (CK), 50% (N50) and 100% (N100) recommended N rates, with or without soil application and seed inoculation using beneficial bacteria (SAB and SIB). Results demonstrated that seed inoculation with beneficial bacteria (particularly N50 + SIB and N100 + SIB) significantly enhanced soil ammonium and nitrate contents, microbial biomass carbon (MBC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and soil enzyme activities at critical growth stages compared to uninoculated controls. These improvements in soil health translated into better plant physiological functioning, evidenced by increased chlorophyll content, higher antioxidant enzyme activities (CAT, POD, SOD, GSH), and reduced membrane injury. Consequently, beneficial bacteria inoculated treatments improved N accumulation and translocation efficiencies, with N100 + SIB showing the highest N accumulation at maturity and its contribution to grain. Grain N content and 1000-grain weight were substantially improved with bacterial treatments, with N100 + SIB achieving a 15–20% increase in protein content and the highest grain yield (5705–5760 kg/ha). Notably, N50 + SIB achieved comparable grain yield and quality improvements as N100 alone, highlighting a promising reduction in chemical N dependency. Moreover, bacterial treatments enhanced PFPN, NUPE, and NIE by 16–34% over conventional N treatments, and the N harvest index (NHI) exceeded 67% in N100 + SIB, indicating efficient N partitioning into grain. In summary, seed inoculation with beneficial bacteria significantly improved soil health, plant growth, and N utilization, allowing for reduced application of synthetic N fertilizers without compromising wheat yield or grain quality. This suggests a sustainable and eco-friendly strategy for enhancing N use efficiency in wheat production.

(1) Background: Understanding the diversity of communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is the basis for understanding the ecological functions of AMF. (2) Methods: The community diversity and distribution of AMF at different elevations in tropical montane rainforests of Mt. Jianfenfling and Mt. Diaoluo were explored using high-throughput sequencing technology. (3) Results: A total of 283 AMF operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were identified from roots and the number of unique OTUs was 173, accounting for 61.13% of the total number discovered in these tropical montane rainforests. At different altitudes, high turnovers of AMF were observed, with the maximum proportion of unique OTUs between two altitudes being 45.16%, recorded between a.s.l. 250 m and 900 m on Mt. Diaoluo. The highest Sobs, Shannon and Pielou diversity indices appeared at 650 m on Mt. Diaoluo. For the two mountains, the soil properties of C, N and C/N have significant impacts on the genera Scutellospora, Paraglomus and unclassified in Archaeosporaceae, while the genera Glomus, Diversispora and Acaulospora are significantly affected by soil P and pH. It can be considered that altitude probably determines the presence of AMF communities by affecting edaphic properties. (4) Conclusions: There are abundant AMF associated with roots in the tropical montane rainforests of China. Furthermore, a high turnover of OTUs was found to exist between the mountains and at different altitudes, revealing diverse AMF community structures in tropical montane rainforests.