16S rRNA gene sequencing

The frozen soil samples were thawed on ice, and DNA was extracted using a PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit (MO BIO Laboratories, Inc., Carlsbad, USA). 16S rRNA genes were amplified using EXtaq enzyme (TaKaRa, Kyoto, Japan) and the specific primers 314F (5′-CCTACGGGNGGCWGCAG-3′) and 805R (5′-GACTACHVGGGTATCTAATCC-3′) with the adapter (index) that targets the V3 and V4 variable regions of bacterial/archaeal 16S rRNA genes. Strongly amplified products 460 bp in length were chosen for further experiments. The amplicons were quantified with a Qubit 2.0 fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, USA), diluted to 1 ng/μL, and sequenced on a MiSeq platform (PE250). In total, 854,514 raw reads were obtained from the 18 samples of rhizosphere soils (6 groups as shown in Fig. 1a, n = 3). We computed operational taxonomic units (OTU) and microbial diversity as described previously [52]. Rarefaction curves of observed species are shown in Additional file 1: Fig. S5.