The Effect of Plant Diversity on the Presence of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Spores in the Same Soil Series

Different arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) species can adapt to a wide variety of soil characteristics and the presence of a wide variety of hosts. AMF spores can even adapt to poor environmental conditions and reproduce by means of certain mechanisms they de-velop. In addition, the presence of different plant species is largely responsible for the presence of different AMF spore species. Mycorrhizal (dependent on mycorrhiza) and non-mycorrhizal (nondependent on mycorrhiza) status of plants, which they form depending on the affinity of plants for mycorrhizae, has a guiding effect on some of their mechanisms. This case affects the increase or decrease of the mycorrhizal spore presence in the soil. Within the scope of the aim of the present study, soil sampling (0-20 cm) was performed from areas cultivated with wheat and sugar beet, which are plants from two different fam-ilies (Gramineae and Amaranthaceae). The sampling areas were in the Alibey Series of Çumra Plain in Konya Closed Basin. In the collected soil samples, (AMF) spore counts were performed and their distributions depending on plant type were determined. In the present study conducted in the Alibey Series of Çumra Plain, the number of mycorrhizal spores isolated from the areas cultivated with wheat, which is a mycorrhizal plant, was determined as 35-259 spores/10 g soil, whereas this number was found to be 17.19-146,19 spores/10 g soil in the same amount of soil isolated from the areas cultivated with non-mycorrhizal sugar beet plant. The difference between the means of the mycorrhizal spore numbers counted through isolating from wheat and sugar beet cultivated soils was found to be statistically significant (P 0.01).