Objective  Effects of planting different species of Arundo on the nutrients, enzyme activities, and microbial community of the soil were investigated.

  Method  Nutrients and enzyme activities in the soil were analyzed before and after on which different varieties of arundo grass were planted. Pearson analysis was applied to corelate the factors. Diversity of microbial community in soil was determined by illumina miseq high-throughput sequencing.

  Results   Six different Arundo species were planted in a pot experiment. In the soils that lvzhou 1 and lvzhou 9 were planted, the contents of available phosphorus (8.20 and 8.72 mg·kg⁻¹, respectively), available nitrogen (22.63 and 8.20 mg·kg⁻¹, respectively), organic carbon (13.83 and 10.48 g·kg⁻¹, respectively), and total nitrogen (0.84 and 0.71 g·kg⁻¹, respectively) were significantly higher than those in control (2.54 mg·kg⁻¹, 14.47 mg·kg⁻¹, 5.72 g·kg⁻¹, and 0.38 g·kg⁻¹, respectively) (P＜0.05). The urease activity was significantly higher than that of control (P＜0.05). The activities of urease significantly correlated with the available phosphorus, available nitrogen, organic carbon, and total nitrogen in the soil (P＜0.01) but not on the invertase (P＞0.05). The microbial diversity indices of the soil were higher after the grass planting than before, while the Ace, Chao, and Shannon indices of the soil planted with lvzhou 1 or lvzhou 3 significantly higher than those of control (P＜0.05). The bacterial Ace and Chao indices all positively correlated with the invertase and ACP activities (P＜0.01), the Shannon index on fungi showed with the ACP activity (P＜0.05).

  Conclusion  Planting arundo grasses, especially lvzhou 1 or lvzhou 3, on an infertile land could conceivably improve the soil quality due to the enrichments brought about through increased enzyme activity and microbial diversity.