Abstract
The rhizosphere, a narrow zone of soil near plant roots, is a hot spot for microbial activity. Rhizosphere microbiota directly or indirectly benefit plants by supplementing nutrients, producing beneficial chemicals, or suppressing pathogens. Plants attract and modulate bacteria within the rhizosphere by releasing exudates. Plants also tend to select the rhizosphere microbiota based on their needs; a phenomenon termed as “rhizosphere effect”. In this study, we characterized the rhizosphere microbiota of peanut plants across the crop development cycle from pre-sowing of seeds to post-harvest of crop under field conditions. The rhizosphere and bulk soil samples from different crop developmental stages were also compared. The composition of bulk soil microbiota resembled microbiota of pre-sowing and post-harvest soil and was markedly different from rhizosphere soil samples. Rhizosphere samples were enriched with multiple organisms mostly from the Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidota phyla. Differences in diversity were observed among the rhizosphere samples but not in bulk soil across different crop development stages. Pseudomonas_M indica was highly enriched during the germination of seeds. Furthermore, Plant Growth Promoting (PGP) bacteria like Bacillus were enriched during the middle stages of crop development but there was a decline in PGP organisms in the matured crop stage. We also observed a significant association of pH and Electrical Conductivity (EC) with the profiles of microbial community. Overall, this study portrayed the changes in rhizosphere microbiota of peanut during different developmental stages of crop and may help to design stage specific bio-strategies such as bio-fertilizer to improve crop yield.
Highlights
The rhizosphere, a narrow zone of soil near plant roots, is a hot spot for microbial activity
While many studies have looked at the effects of soil type, geographic location, crop genotypes and several other factors, very few have looked at the changes in microbiome across the crop developmental cycle[2,3,4,6,7,8,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]
We looked at the structural changes in the community of soil organisms during the entire cycle of peanut development starting from pre-sowing of seeds to post-harvest of crop (Figure S1, Table 1)
Summary
The rhizosphere, a narrow zone of soil near plant roots, is a hot spot for microbial activity. We characterized the rhizosphere microbiota of peanut plants across the crop development cycle from pre-sowing of seeds to postharvest of crop under field conditions. The rhizosphere and bulk soil samples from different crop developmental stages were compared. Plant Growth Promoting (PGP) bacteria like Bacillus were enriched during the middle stages of crop development but there was a decline in PGP organisms in the matured crop stage. Rhizosphere microbes respond to plant exudates and help plants via various plant growth promoting impacts including defence against p athogens[1] This makes understanding the rhizosphere microbiome an important part of sustainable agriculture. The study looks at the horizontal profile of microbiota throughout the crop developmental cycle starting from pre-sowing of seeds to post-harvest of the crops. The microbiota structure changes with the minutest of changes in several factors, we believe that looking at this kind of horizontal structural changes can form a foundation for a sustainable agriculture approach
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