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International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences Research Article
Crop-specific variation in rhizosphere fungal population and soil physico-chemical properties: A two-year case study from Akkalkuwa tehsil, Nandurbar district
Vijayalaxami Shelke Sarode and Ashwini Chandrakant Patil
Year : 2026 | Pages: 29-39
Received on: 26/06/2026
Revised on: 22/07/2026
Accepted on: 17/09/2026
Published on: 31/10/2026
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Vijayalaxami Shelke Sarode and Ashwini Chandrakant Patil( 2026).
Crop-specific variation in rhizosphere fungal population and soil physico-chemical properties: A two-year case study from Akkalkuwa tehsil, Nandurbar district
. International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences, 11( 5), 29-39.
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Abstract
Fungi that live around crop roots help the plant in many simple but important ways they break down plant waste, release nutrients trapped in the soil, and often protect the plant from harmful soil germs. But the number and type of these fungi keep changing with the crop, the season and the condition of the soil. This study looks at that change for four crops commonly grown in Akkalkuwa Tehsil of Nandurbar District, Maharashtra banana, sugarcane, groundnut and chilli by comparing the rhizosphere fungi recorded over two years, 2021-22 and 2022-23. Soil samples were collected from farmers' fields every season (winter, summer and rainy), and fungi were grown and counted using the standard dilution-plate method, then identified up to genus or species level. Along with this, soil pH, moisture, temperature, organic carbon and available nitrogen were also recorded. In total, 26 fungal species were found in 2021-22 and 21 in 2022-23, with 14 species common to both years. Overall, the average fungal count across all four crops went up from 17,559.7 CFU/g of soil in the first year to 20,343.8 CFU/g in the second year, a rise of about 16%. This rise was not the same for every crop groundnut and sugarcane showed the biggest increase (34.8% and 26.1%), banana increased only slightly, and chilli actually went down by about 8%. In all four crops and in both years, the rainy season had the highest fungal count and summer the lowest, matching the pattern of soil moisture. The types of fungi present also kept changing: genera such as Aspergillus, Penicillium, Mucor, Rhizopus, Chaetomium and Trichoderma were found throughout the study, but which species led each crop's rhizosphere shifted clearly between the two years most noticeably in groundnut, where Rhizopus stolonifer, not found at all in the first year, became the leading species in the second. Soil pH, moisture and available nitrogen also increased from the first year to the second in most crops, especially in banana and groundnut, more or less matching the rise seen in fungal numbers. These results suggest that soil moisture and nutrient level are the main factors behind the year-to-year change in rhizosphere fungi of this semi-arid, tribal farming belt, and this two-year record can serve as a useful reference for future soil-health studies and for finding useful biocontrol fungi in the region.
Keywords
Rhizosphere fungi, Fungal population, Species composition, Comparative study, Soil moisture.
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© The Author(s) 2026. This article is published by International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
