Abstract
Rhizosphere microbial community composition can be influenced by different biotic and abiotic factors. We investigated the composition and co-variation of rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities from two sorghum genotypes (BRS330 and SRN-39) in three different plant growth stages (emergence of the second leaf, (day10), vegetative to reproductive differentiation point (day 35), and at the last visible emerged leaf (day 50)) in two different soil types, Clue field (CF) and Vredepeel (VD). We observed that either bacterial or fungal community had its composition stronger influenced by soil followed by plant growth stage and cultivar. However, the influence of plant growth stage was higher on fungal community composition than on the bacterial community composition. Furthermore, we showed that sorghum rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities can affect each other’s composition and structure. The decrease in relative abundance of the fungus genus Gibberella over plant growth stages was followed by decrease of the bacterial families Oxalobacteracea and Sphingobacteriacea. Although cultivar effect was not the major responsible for bacterial and fungal community composition, cultivar SRN-39 showed to promote a stronger co-variance between bacterial and fungal communities.
Highlights
The rhizosphere harbors a wide range of microorganisms, which have been shown to influence significantly plant growth, root architecture, and nutrient uptake [1,2,3,4]
The results showed that soil had significant effects on both the bacterial (F = 6.87; P < 0.001) and fungal (F = 7.89; P < 0.001) communities; plant growth stage had a significant effect only on the fungal community (F = 2.68; P < 0.001) and cultivar had no significant effect on both communities (Table S4)
Through Welch’s test, we found that among the bacteria families driving this dissimilarity, Bradyrhizobiaceae was more abundant in rhizosphere soil of Clue field (CF) than VD, whereas Caulobactereaceae, Phyllobacteriaceae, and Xanthomonadaceae were more abundant in VD (Fig. S2)
Summary
The rhizosphere harbors a wide range of microorganisms, which have been shown to influence significantly plant growth, root architecture, and nutrient uptake [1,2,3,4]. The composition of microbial rhizosphere communities is influenced by biotic and abiotic factors including plant species (or genotypes) and soil management [5,6,7]. Studies on the impact of different soil fertilization managements on the composition of the bacterial community in the rhizosphere of sorghum have shown that the bacterial community is more affected by compost than by inorganic fertilizers [8]. In an earlier study, we found soil to be the most important factor on sorghum rhizosphere bacterial community assembly followed by plant growth stage and plant genotype [10]. We found that along plant growth stage, the impact of soil on the bacterial community assembly reduced and, unlike, the impact of plant genotype increased
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