Increased enzyme activities and fungal degraders by Gloeophyllum trabeum inoculation improve lignocellulose degradation efficiency during manure-straw composting.

The present study investigated the effect of brown-rot fungus Gloeophyllum trabeum inoculation on lignocellulose degradation, enzyme activities and fungal community during co-composting of swine manure and wheat straw. G. trabeum inoculation shortened the maturation period of composting from 39 to 30 days. Composting piles inoculated with G. trabeum showed a higher degree of maturity as indicated by 31.6% lower C/N ratio and 29.4% higher GI. The decomposition rate of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin was increased by 181.1%, 49.4% and 109.4%, respectively, due to higher activities of filter paper enzyme, xylanase, manganese peroxidase and laccase. Redundancy analysis showed that inoculating G. trabeum influenced the succession of fungal communities by changing the main physicochemical parameters, resulting in the increased relative abundance of Aspergillus, Mycothermus and Melanocarpus. Pearson correlation analysis indicated that more dominant fungal genera were involved in the production of lignocellulose-degrading enzymes after G. trabeum inoculation.