ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
This article is part of the Research TopicRegulatory Effects of Irrigation and Fertilization on Aboveground and Underground Parts of CropsView all 13 articles
Fungal-Fermented Corn Straw as an Organic Amendment: Balancing Tomato Nutrition, Soil Functions and Antibiotic Resistance
Provisionally accepted
- Jilin Agriculture University, Changchun, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Tomato growers need strategies that improve fruit nutritional quality and soil health while reducing dependence on synthetic fertilizers and wasting less crop straw. Fungal-fermented straw products (FSP) are a candidate amendment, but their suitable application rate, placement depth and side effects on soil microbes and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) remain unclear. Here we produced an FSP from corn straw via solid-state fermentation for 30 d using Auricularia cornea cv. Yumuer and ran a single-season greenhouse pot experiment with an unamended control (no FSP) and six FSP treatments combining different rates (0.5–5% w/w) and soil incorporation depths (3 and 10 cm). We measured yield (growth and fruit yield), fruit quality, soil health, biochemical responses, and molecular responses. FSP at 2% (w/w) incorporated to 10 cm increased yield by about 30% and raised fruit lycopene and vitamin C by 20–40% compared with the control. It also enhanced soil organic carbon, available P and K, humic substances and key enzymes, and shifted microbes toward decomposers and plant-beneficial taxa (e.g., Streptomyces, Sphingomonas, Nocardioides, and Arthrobacter). A high surface dose (5% at 3 cm) increased total ARGs, whereas 2% at 10 cm achieved quality and soil benefits with ARG levels comparable to or lower than the control. These results suggest a practical application pattern that balances agronomic benefits with ARG-related risk for recycling crop residues in intensive tomato systems.
Keywords: ARGS, FSP, microbial community, soil functions/enzymes, Tomato quality
Received: 11 Dec 2025; Accepted: 05 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Song, Zhou, Ma, Chen, Duan and Dai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yueting Dai
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.