Comparative Analysis of Microbial Community Diversity and Dynamics on Diseased Tubers During Potato Storage in Different Regions of Qinghai China.

Tianyan Xie,Jian Wang,Yufan Hao,Shuo Shen,Wei Li

doi:10.3389/fgene.2022.818940

Abstract

Effective storage of potatoes is very important for the food industry. Given the problems involving rotten potatoes and low quality during storage, harvested potatoes from the main potato-producing areas in the Qinghai Plateau were treated by selection and air drying (Group “A”) and the others were stored directly as controls (Group “C”). Then, the microbial community structure and diversity of diseased potato tubers from four main production areas were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing technology in different storage stages. The results showed that the community composition and diversity of microbes in different regions and storage periods were different, and the dominant fungi in diseased potato tubers were Boeremia in Huangyuan (HY), Maying (MY) and Zhongling (ZL) and Apiotrichum in Huangzhong (HZ) at the genus level. The dominant bacterial genus was Pseudomonas, but its abundance varied in samples from different regions and storage periods. In the analysis of indicator species, there were some common species and endemic species in each region and period, and the period with the largest number of different species was the third period. Among the four storage periods, the region with the largest number of different species was HZ. Some fungi, especially Fusarium and other potato pathogens, were more abundant in control Group “C” than in treatment Group “A.” In the diversity analysis, the α diversity of fungi in Group “C” was higher than that in Group “A,” but the α diversity of bacteria in Group “A” was higher than that in Group “C,” and there was no obvious regularity with storage time. The β diversity varied significantly among different regions. In addition, through functional prediction analysis, it was found that a plant pathogen was one of the main nutritional types of fungi, which indicated that treatment by selection and drying could significantly reduce phytopathogenic microbe and other microorganisms and could be used as an effective measure for potato storage compared with the prevention and control by drugs that can cause environmental pollution. Further analysis of co-occurrence network showed that pathogenic fungi Fusarium was negatively correlated with pathogenic bacteria Erwinia, and there is also a negative correlation between pathogens and antagonistic microorganisms indicated that there were various symbiotic relationships among microorganisms in diseased potatoes. This study may provide a theoretical basis for biological control of potato cellar diseases and the maintenance of potato quality during long-term storage.

Highlights

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a staple of the world’s diet and is grown in more than 100 countries
At the 97% sequence similarity level, the fungal sequences clustered into 16,094 operational taxonomic units (OTUs), and the bacterial sequences clustered into 53,671 OTUs (Supplementary Tables S3, S4)
As Pseudomonas, which we mentioned in the previous discussion may be both pathogenic bacteria and antimicrobial bacteria, we found that it was negatively correlated with pathogen Erwinia and positively correlated with antagonistic bacteria Bacillus (Figure 10B), and it has a strong negative correlation with Fusarium and a positive correlation with antagonistic fungi (Figure 10C), so it was speculated that Pseudomonas here is antagonistic bacteria

Summary

Introduction

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a staple of the world’s diet and is grown in more than 100 countries. It is the fourth largest crop after corn, wheat and rice (Boivin et al, 2020). The yield of potato is much higher than that of wheat, corn and rice, so there is room for improvement. Compared with other staple grain crops, the development of the potato industry will become increasingly important in ensuring world food security in the future. The planting area and total output of potato in China ranks first in the world, but there are still many limiting factors in production, such as the poor quality of seed potatoes, simple storage methods, and numerous rotten potatoes (Li Yang et al, 2020)

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