ABSTRACT
Six soil samples including 3 wilt disease-infected samples and 3 disease-free samples were collected from the banana orchards in 3 areas in Lingao County, Hainan Province of South China. The soil physical and chemical properties were determined by conventional methods, and the diversity of soil bacterial community was analyzed by terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP). Then, the relationships between the soil bacterial community composition and the soil physical and chemical properties were investigated. In the same areas, most of the soil physical and chemical properties were poorer in disease-infected than in disease-free banana orchards, with the most obvious difference in soil available P content and pH. The T-RFLP analysis showed the diversity of soil bacterial community was richer in disease-infected than in disease-free banana orchards. The lengths of the dominant T-RFs in the 3 areas were 144, 147 and 233 bp, respectively. Through the comparison with phylogenetic assignment tool, it was deduced that the dominant species in the 3 areas were Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus and Eubacterium ruminantium. The distribution of most T-RFs was related to the soil alkaline hydrolyzable N, available K, available P and water content, and the relative abundance of most T-RFs was richer in disease-infected than in disease-free banana orchards.