Effects of long-term chemical fertilization on diazotrophic populations in the paddy soil

In order to understand the effects of long-term chemical fertilization on diazotrophic communities, we quantified the abundance of and characterized the bacterial community structures based on the nifH gene, high-throughput sequencing and real-time quantitative PCR. Our study provides the first in-depth pyrosequencing analysis of the N-fixing community in a long-term chemical fertilized paddy field and a control paddy soil without any fertilization for more than twenty years.