Abstract: In the study of environmental safety assessment of transgenic crops, whether the introduction of exogenous genes will affect the ecological balance of soil microbial populations and non-target organisms has been controversial. In this study, we analyzed the differences in rhizosphere soil physicochemical properties of glyphosate resistant Brassica napus overexpressing mEPSPS (JHX6) (GMO) and the control material (J9707) (GMO-free) in different developmental stages. The fungal communities of rhizosphere soil in field and pot experiments were analyzed using ITS high-throughput sequencing technology of IonS5TM^XL. Results showed that there was no significant difference in physicochemical properties of rhizosphere soil between the two materials at the same developmental stages. The main fungal phyla enriched in the rhizosphere soil of B. napus were Olpidiomycota and Ascomycota. There were no significant differences of alpha diversity and structure of fungal community in the rhizosphere soil of both GMO and GMO-free at the same developmental stages. There was a significant difference in the relative abundance of Olpidiomycota in the rhizosphere soil of the two materials in both pot and field experiments. Our results suggest that the mEPSPS introduction in B. napus did not affect rhizosphere soil physicochemical properties and fungal community structure and diversity, but would affect the relative abundance of specific fungal species.

Key words: mEPSPS gene, Brassica napus, rhizosphere, fungal diversity, community structure