Abstract
Plants have evolved the capability to respond to interspecific neighbors by changing morphological performance and reshaping belowground microbiota. However, whether neighboring plants influence the microbial colonization of the host’s root and further affect host performance is less understood. In this study, using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) roots from over 5 years of mono- and intercropping field systems, we found that neighbor maize can alter the peanut root microbial composition and re-shape microbial community assembly. Interspecific maize coexistence increased the colonization of genera Bradyrhizobium and Streptomyces in intercropped peanut roots. Through endophytic bacterial isolation and isolate back inoculation experiments, we demonstrated that the functional potentials of available nutrient accumulation and phytohormones production from Bradyrhizobium and Streptomyces endowed them with the ability to act as keystones in the microbial network to benefit peanut growth and production with neighbor competition. Our results support the idea that plants establish a plant-endophytic microbial holobiont through root selective filtration to enhance host competitive dominance, and provide a promising direction to develop modern diversified planting for harnessing crop microbiomes for the promotion of crop growth and productivity in sustainable agriculture.
Highlights
Intensive monoculture can meet the population demands for food production, this comes at the expense of belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Frison et al, 2011; Isbell et al, 2013)
Based on the construction of microbial co-occurrence network and the result of Linear Discriminant Analysis coupled with Effect Size (LEfSe), we found that members of the genera Bradyrhizobium and Streptomyces acted as keystones of the root microbial network and were biomarkers in intercropped peanut
We found that neighboring maize promoted the growth and yield of the focal peanut by modulating peanut root endophytic microbial community composition and assembly
Summary
Intensive monoculture can meet the population demands for food production, this comes at the expense of belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Frison et al, 2011; Isbell et al, 2013). In nature, plants do not live alone as single entities, but form a complex holobiont with microorganisms to adapt to various environmental conditions and changes (Niu et al, 2017; Zhang et al, 2019; Trivedi et al, 2020). These host dependent microbes have been reported to affect plant growth (Pieterse et al, 2014; Vandenkoornhuyse et al, 2015), but relatively few studies have sought to understand the effect of interspecific neighbors on focal plant root microbial colonization and their functioning in the field (Li et al, 2019; Gong et al, 2021). These, theoretically, provide the possibility for focal plants to alter root microbial community construction
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