Abstract
Beneficial microorganisms have been extensively used to make plants more resistant to abiotic and biotic stress. We previously identified a consortium of three plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) strains (Bacillus cereus AR156, Bacillus subtilis SM21, and Serratia sp. XY21; hereafter “BBS”) as a promising and environmentally friendly biocontrol agent. In this study, the effect of BBS on a soil-borne disease of sweet pepper was evaluated. Application of BBS significantly reduced the prevalence of phytophthora blight and improved fruit quality and soil properties relative to the control. BBS was able to alter the soil bacterial community: it significantly increased the abundances of Burkholderia, Comamonas, and Ramlibacter, which were negatively associated with disease severity, relative to the control. A redundancy analysis suggested that BBS-treated soil samples were dominated by Burkholderia, Comamonas, Ramlibacter, Sporichthya, Achromobacter, and Pontibacter; abundance of these genera was related to total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), ammonium nitrogen (AN), total potassium (TP), and available phosphorus (AP) contents. This suggests that BBS treatment shifted the microbe community to one that suppressed soil-borne disease and improved the soil chemical properties.
Highlights
Sweet pepper Capsicum annuum L. var. grossum (Solanaceae) is an annual plant cultivated throughout the world
The broth culture was spun at 6000 × g in a centrifuge for 15 min, and the resulting pellet was resuspended in sterile water and adjusted to a concentration of 109 colony forming units per ml (CFU/ml) for further experiments
The soil was a sandy loam with pH 7.08, 80.76 g/kg total organic carbon (TOC), 139.23 g/kg total organic matter (TOM), 12.51 g/kg total N (TN), 26.24 mg/kg NH4+-N (AN), 435.10 mg/kg NO3−-N (NN), 4.95 g/kg total P (TP), 1.15 g/kg available P (AP), and 1.69 g/kg available K
Summary
Sweet pepper Capsicum annuum L. var. grossum (Solanaceae) is an annual plant cultivated throughout the world. Grossum (Solanaceae) is an annual plant cultivated throughout the world. It is widely valued because of its unique flavor and high nutritional value, especially in terms of its vitamin C content. Soil-borne diseases such as phytophthora blight have increased through the practice of continuous cropping (Li et al, 2017). These diseases cause the loss of soil quality which have severely restricted the development of the sweet pepper industry (Zhang et al, 2016) and the income of sweet pepper growers has been reduced. The majority of soil-borne pathogens survive in bulk soil; under suitable conditions, they infect host plants to establish parasitic relationships with the plants (Raaijmakers et al, 2009; Liu et al, 2018)
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