【Objective】Biofumigation has been broadly used to describe the action of fumigants releasing volatile compounds during biodegradation of green manure, organic amendments and compost suppressing soilborne pests and diseases and controlling weeds. It could be considered as a ‘natural’ alternative to chemical fumigation and control of a variety of soilborne diseases and hence has been suggested as a means to mitigate certain adverse effects, like infestation of soil diseases of continuous cropping on the soils. Researches in the past already demonstrated that biofumigation of soils under continuous cropping (SUCC) with Brassica juncea could effectively control soilborne pests and pathogens, change soil microbial community composition, and provide some additional nutrients. In order to explore feasibility of using marigold (Tateges erecta) as biofumigant to alleviate the hazard left by continuous cropping of apple trees in orchards, in an attempt to provide a theoretical basis for extrapolating such an environment friendly fumigation measure to control soil-borne diseases in apple orchards, a pot experiment was carried out【Method】The pot experiment was designed to have 5 treatments, i.e. Treatment CK (untreated old orchard soil), Treatment F (mulched with film), Treatment 1.5T+F (1.5 g kg^-1 Tateges erecta powder incorporated and mulched with film), Treatment 6.0T+F (6.0 g kg^-1 Tateges erecta powder plus mulching), Treatment 15.0T+F (15.0 g kg^-1 Tateges erecta powder plus mulching). All the pots in the experiment were filled up with the same soil from a 25 years old apple orchard in Wangzhuang Village, Manzhuang Town, Tai'an of Shandong, China, divided into five groups and treated separately in line with the designing. Tateges erecta powder was prepared after the plant was washed in tap water, air-dried, and pulverized with a high speed grinder, and then stored in a sealing bag ready for use. All the pots were mulched with film after watering except for Treatment CK. Then 15 days later, all the mulched pots had the film removed and remained exposed to sunlight for 7 days, before Malus hupehensis Rehd. seedlings were planted. At the end of the experiment, samples of the soils and plants in the pots were collected, separately, for analysis of biomass and root morphological indices, activities of soil enzymes (urease, phosphatase, invertase and catalase), soil microbial population and fungal community structure. Soil microbial population was determined with the dilution plating method; fungi community structure with the technique of terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP); and copy number of Fusarium proliferatum with the real-time quantitative PCR detecting system (QPCR). 【Result】 Compared with Treatment CK, the biofumigation significantly increase the biomass of apple seedlings, promoted root growth and improved activities of the soil enzymes. And Treatment 6.0T+F was the most significant in effect and was 8.1 and 13.1 times as high as Treatment CK in dry weight of shoot and root, 333.0% and 548.4% higher than Treatment CK in root surface area and root volume, 103.6% and 77.6% higher in activities of urease and phosphatase, respectively, 200.4% higher in invertase activity and 64.6% higher in catalase activity. Besides, the treatment was higher in bacterial population, but lower in fungal population, with the ratio of bacteria to fungi reaching up to 219.9, or about 5.6 times that of Treatment CK, and consequently lower in Shannon diversity index, evenness index and richness index but higher in Simpson's index of the fungi community. And gene copies of Fusarium proliferatum decreased by 57.9% in the treatment. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that the fungal communities in the soils varying in Tateges erecta powder treatment rate were completely separated from that in the control. 【Conclusion】To sum up, Biofumigation using Tateges erecta powder at a proper rate (6.0 g kg^-1) of old orchard soils may increase the number of beneficial bacteria, inhibit propagation of soil pathogenic fungi, and preserve the diversity of the soil microbial community structure, and then effectively alleviate the hazard continuous cropping poses to replanting and improve growth of the replants.