Biodiversity of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in Natural and Agricultural Land and their relationship with soil properties in Zagros Forest

This study was carried out in order to investigate the biodiversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in natural oak forest, broad-leaved plantation, needle-leaved plantation, agricultural and rangeland land uses in Lene habitat, Chardavol city, Ilam province. For this purpose, five mixed soil samples were randomly collected from each land use at soil depths of 0-5 and 5-15 cm and the characteristics of soil and AMF were investigated. Wet sieving and sucrose method were used to extract AMF and their identification was done based on spore morphological characteristics such as shape, color, size, number of wall layers, thickness of wall layers and hypha shape. Totally 19 AMF species belonging to eight genera including Glomus, Acaulospora, Claroideoglomus, Rhizophagus, Septoglomus, Dentiscutata, Paraglomus, Entrophospora were identified. The results showed that spores abundance and biodiversity of AMF were different in different land uses. The highest spore density was related to natural forest (78.12), broadleaf forestry (66.28) and pasture (57.48), and the lowest was related to agriculture (50.96) and needle-leaved plantation (28.16). It was also found that the abundance of symbiotic AMF was the highest in the natural forest (16.6) and rangeland (15.8) and the lowest in the agricultural (11.6) and needle-leaved plantation (14.4) land uses. Shannon-Weiner and Simpson's diversity indices in natural forest, rangeland and plantation were significantly higher than agricultural land use. According to the results, there was no significant difference between the two depths of soil samples in spore density and biodiversity indices. The results also showed that the change in land use had negative effect on the diversity and abundance of symbiotic AMF. Therefore, to preserve biodiversity of AMF, it is recommended that natural forests be under more protection.