Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi communities shaped by host-plant affect the outcome of plant-soil feedback in dryland restoration

1. Plant inoculation with Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) can be a useful tool to overcome challenges in dry forest restoration. However, advances are still needed to guide choices regarding soil origin and inoculum production methods, since outcomes can vary due to plant-soil feedbacks (PSF). We evaluate how soil origin and host plant used for inoculum production affect AMF community and therefore the plant biomass accumulation and functional traits.
2. In the conditioning phase, we investigated whether soils originating from a recovered area (Quarry) and a vegetation fragment (Caatinga) would have their AMF communities modified due to the growth of Sorghum bicolor (used for inoculum production) and Senna uniflora (used in Brazilian semiarid restoration). In the feedback phase, we compared the performance of four plants species growing on a degraded soil and inoculated or not by a mixture of AMF isolates in comparison to soil inoculum prepared from the conditioning phase.
3. The ino...