The Proportion of Soil-Borne Fungal Pathogens Increases with Elevated Organic Carbon in Agricultural Soils

Fungal phytopathogens are important threats to soil and crop health, but their community composition and environmental determinants remain unclear. We found that soil organic carbon is the key factor of the prevalence of fungal phytopathogens through a field survey, which is also supported by our long-term (6-year) experiment showing the applications of crop straw and fresh livestock manure significantly increased the proportion of fungal phytopathogens. These findings advance our understanding of the occurrence and environmental drivers of soil-borne fungal phytopathogens under agricultural fertilization regime and have important implications for the control of soil-borne pathogens.