【Objective】 Imbalance of soil microflora in rhizosphere is an important cause impeding continuous cropping of crops. And crops under different cropping systems may have certain specific rhizospheric soil microbial communities that would mitigate or aggravate the impediment to continuous cropping. 【Method】 By employing the classic culturable method and molecular classification method, this study investigated variations of the soil microbial communities in the rhizoplane, rhizosphere and bulk soils of peanut under continuous cropping and rotation systems and their relationships with impediment to continuous cropping.【Result】 Compared with the peanut under rotation, the crop under continuous cropping was 45.8% lower in pod yield, 57.5% lower in number of root nodules, and 24.1% lower in plant biomass, but 2.9 times and 2.4 times higher in incidence of bacterial wilt and root rot, respectively. In the peanut fields under either rotation or continuous cropping fields, distribution of bacterial and fungal populations varied significantly, displaying a decreasing trend from rhizoplane, rhizosphere to bulk soils. Particularly, the number of microbes in the rhizoplane was 2.83 to 329 times higher than that in the rhizosphere. Further investigations found that population of soil microbes in the rhizoplane differed sharply between the peanuts under rotation and continuous cropping. The former was 1.06 to 3.28 times higher in bacterial population and 1.14 to 14.44 times higher in fungal population than the latter. The difference was more significant than that in the rhizosphere and bulk, which indicates that the soil microbial community in the rhizoplane was affected the most significantly by physiological and metabolic activities of peanut root and the most closely related with impediment to continuous cropping. Molecular identification of culturable microbial groups shows that the proportion of beneficial microbes, including Pseudomonas sp., Geotrichum candidum, in the rhizoplane of peanut under rotation was higher than that under continuous cropping, while the proportion of pathogenic microbes ( Talaromyces sp., Aspergillus niger, Clonostachys rosea , Serratia sp.) was in a reverse trend. 【Conclusion】 All the findings in this study suggest that continuous cropping favors pathogenic fungi colonizing in rhizoplane, thus inhibiting growth of the beneficial bacteria, which could be the major cause of sharp increase in soil-borne diseases under continuous cropping.