PLFA Profiling of soil microbial community structure and diversity in different dry tropical ecosystems of Jharkhand

A B S T R A C T Phospholipid fatty acid analysis (PLFA) is used as culture-independent tool in microbial ecology studies. Classification of PLFAs into chemically distinct subgroups will assess insights into microbial community structure involved in microbial processes, and will have direct impacts on soil fertility. The PLFAs are synthesized during microbial growth, degrade rapidly during cell death, and hence provide an accurate census of living microbial community. PLFA profile of FMS dominated with monounsaturated fatty acids suggesting the abundance of gram- negative bacteria, anaerobes, actinomycetes and methanobacter. Higher poly- unsaturated fatty acids in FS suggesting abundance of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and fungal populations. Shannon diversity index based on the distribution of 92 PLFAs varies from 2.4735 (FMS) to 2.9401 (PTS). Besides, higher Pielou s evenness index in AS (0.8034) suggesting greater diversity as compared to FMS (0.6118). Difference in fungal-to- bacterial ratio across the sites was found to be highest in FS (0.067). Principal component analysis can able to discriminate seven soil profiles with 52.3% cumulative percentage of variance. Further, cluster analysis can able to group the microbial community structure into six independent clusters. Thus, the PLFA analysis provides an approach for microbial diversity assessment, and ultimately the potential impacts of environmental processes on soil microbial community structure.