Abstract
Many species of seed-borne fungi are closely allied with seed varieties and growing regions, including many seed-borne pathogens, but their species richness and distribution remain largely unknown. This study was conducted to explore the seed-borne fungal composition, abundance and diversity in Avena sativa (B7) and A. nuda (B2) seed samples collected from Baicheng (BB), Dingxi (DB) and Haibei (HB) city, using Illumina sequencing techniques. Our results show that a total of 543,707 sequences were obtained and these were assigned to 244 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with 97% similarity. Oat varieties and growing locations had a significant difference on seed-borne fungal diversity. HB had a higher fungal diversity than BB and DB, Shannon diversity and ACE richness index of fungal in HB seeds was significantly higher than in BB and DB (P < 0.05). In different varieties, both taxon richness and evenness of B7 seeds was significantly higher than B2 (P < 0.05). A total of 4 fungal phyla and 26 fungal genera were detected. Ascomycota was the dominant phylum and Alternaria sp. was the most abundant genus in B2 and B7 oat seeds from different regions. Mycosphaerella sp. had a higher abundance in HB7 and DB7, respectively, Epicoccum sp. had a higher abundance in HB7 and BB7. The results of alpha and beta diversity analysis revealed the presence of different effects in fungal communities of different varieties and regions of oat, especially in seed pathogenic fungi distribution. Structural equation modeling also explained oat varieties and growing regions have significant influences on seed-borne fungal abundance, composition and diversity. This study demonstrated that the differences of varieties and regions are the main factors resulting in the changes of seed-borne fungal community of oat.
Highlights
Oat, a cereal of the family Gramineae, is an important source of nutritious food and feed, and widely cultivated in temperate regions of the world, especially in Northern Europe, China, North America, Australia, and Canada (Marshall et al, 2013; Sánchez-Martin et al, 2014)
The Chao 1 and ACE indexes of BB2 and BB7 were significantly lower than other oat seeds (P < 0.05), which indicated that BB2 and BB7 had lower seed-borne fungal community richness than other oat seeds (Figures 1B,C)
The Shannon and Simpson indices of BB2 were significantly lower than DB2 and HB2, while DB7 were significantly lower than BB7 and HB7 (P < 0.05), which showed BB2 and DB7 had lower seed-borne fungal community diversity than other oat seeds (Figures 1D,E)
Summary
A cereal of the family Gramineae, is an important source of nutritious food and feed, and widely cultivated in temperate regions of the world, especially in Northern Europe, China, North America, Australia, and Canada (Marshall et al, 2013; Sánchez-Martin et al, 2014). Covered oat is used for animal feeding due to its high-forage yield, great palatability, high sugar and protein content, lower neutral washing fiber content, while naked oat is used as human consumption because of its cholesterol-lowering properties and high levels of β-glucan, oil, antioxidants, fat-soluble vitamin E and polyunsaturated fatty acids, it has been recognized as a health food with the benefits which prevents dermatology, hypercholesterolemia, cardiovascular disease and diabetes (Cui et al, 2010; Sterna et al, 2014; Guo et al, 2017; Munkhtuya, 2017; Sadras et al, 2019) They are all grown for producing grain, green pasture and hay to provide an excellent source of emergency forage before winter and health food. With the increase in demand and use for oats and their products, oat has attracted considerable interest for its high nutritional value and has become a high efficiency crop of degraded grasslands worldwide, oat research has become the focus of food science and animal husbandry development (Guo et al, 2012; Marshall et al, 2013)
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