Abstract
Plants tissues are colonized by diverse communities of microorganisms called endophytes. They are key determinants of plant production and health, for example by facilitating nutrient exchanges or limiting disease development. Endophytic communities of banana plants have not been studied until very recently, and their potential role in disease development has not been explored so far. Roots from symptomatic and non-symptomatic banana plants were sampled from fields infected by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense race 1. The goal was to compare the endophytic microbiota between symptomatic and non-symptomatic plants through high throughput sequencing of 16s rDNA and shotgun metagenome sequencing. The results revealed that the endophytic root microbiome in bananas is dominated by Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes followed to a lesser extent by Actinobacteria. The development of disease greatly impacted the endophytic microbial communities. For example, Flavobacteriales abundance was correlated with symptom development.
Highlights
Plants live in close relationship with microbes that inhabit the rhizosphere region
After removal of singleton operational taxonomic units (OTUs), 21,897 OTUs were clustered with a variable repartition among samples: 6571 (S1H), 5561 (S2I), 6782 (S3H), 5311 (S4I), 7450 (S5H), 8747 (S6I), 4867 (S7H), and 7811 (S8I) (Supplementary Table S2)
The results revealed that Proteobacteria were the predominant bacterial groups in the non-symptomatic samples, followed by Bacteriodetes and Actinobacteria (Figure 1A–C)
Summary
The microbiome plays a key role for plant health and productivity via nutrient acquisition, tolerance to stress conditions, and inducing resistance against phytopathogens [1]. The endophytic microbiome corresponds to the microbes that colonize and reside within the plant tissues [2]. These microbiomes have been exploited as biocontrol agents promoting plant growth and health in various crops [3,4]. Advanced technologies such as high throughput sequencing (HTS) allow for an in-depth characterization of the functions of the plant endophytes [5,6,7]
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