Abstract
The rhizosphere microflora are key determinants that contribute to plant health and productivity, which can support plant nutrition and resistance to biotic and abiotic stressors. However, limited research is conducted on the areca palm rhizosphere microbiota. To further study the effect of the areca palm’s developmental stages on the rhizosphere microbiota, the rhizosphere microbiota of areca palm (Areca catechu) grown in its main producing area were examined in Wanning, Hainan province, at different vegetation stages by an Illumina Miseq sequence analysis of the 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid and internal transcribed spacer genes. Significant shifts of the taxonomic composition of the bacteria and fungi were observed in the four stages. Burkholderia-Caballeronia-Paraburkholderia were the most dominant group in stage T1 and T2; the genera Allorhizobium-Neorhizobium-Pararhizobium-Rhizobium were decreased significantly from T1 to T2; and the genera Acidothermus and Bacillus were the most dominant in stage T3 and T4, respectively. Meanwhile, Neocosmospora, Saitozyma, Penicillium, and Trichoderma were the most dominant genera in the stage T1, T2, T3, and T4, respectively. Among the core microbiota, the dominant bacterial genera were Burkholderia-Caballeronia-Paraburkholderia and Bacillus, and the dominant fungal genera were Saitozyma and Trichoderma. In addition, we identified five bacterial genera and five fungal genera that reached significant levels during development. Finally, we constructed the OTU (top 30) interaction network of bacteria and fungi, revealed its interaction characteristics, and found that the bacterial OTUs exhibited more extensive interactions than the fungal OTUs. Understanding the rhizosphere soil microbial diversity characteristics of the areca palm could provide the basis for exploring microbial association and maintaining the areca palm’s health.
Highlights
The areca palm (Areca catechu L.), an important economic and medicinal crop widely cultivated in the tropical zone, has been utilised extensively in agriculture, industry, and for religious purposes [1,2]
The compounds released by the plants can affect the rhizosphere soil directly, and the rhizosphere microorganisms are generally influenced by the soil type [7], environmental conditions [9], plant genotype [10], and plant developmental stage [11]
The results demonstrated that the bacterial and fungal fungal communities changed distinctly during the development of the areca palm, for the communities changed distinctly during the development of the areca palm, for the core core bacterial and fungal OTUs only accounted for 28.4% (1579/5558) and 13.2%
Summary
The areca palm (Areca catechu L.), an important economic and medicinal crop widely cultivated in the tropical zone, has been utilised extensively in agriculture, industry, and for religious purposes [1,2]. The areca palm is the second-largest tropical cash crop, and is becoming one of the main economic pillars of Hainan, China. Most attention given to the areca palm has been dedicated to revealing its genetic variability [3], genome assembly [4], elucidation of its secondary metabolite pathways by transcriptome sequencing [5], and the microbiome and metabolome analysis of its leaves [6]. Despite the economic importance of the areca palm, little work has been done to explore its rhizosphere microbiome. The rhizosphere is an environment where a large number of microbes communicate extensively, and the plant shapes the rhizosphere microbiome [8,12]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call