Non-target impacts of fungicide disturbance on phyllosphere yeasts in conventional and no-till management

Zachary A Noel,Reid Longley,Frances Trail,Martin I Chilvers,Gian Maria Niccolò Benucci,Gregory Bonito

doi:10.1038/s43705-022-00103-w

Zachary A Noel, Reid Longley + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s43705-022-00103-w

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Journal: ISME Communications	Publication Date: Feb 23, 2022
Citations: 19	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Michigan State University, Auburn University

Abstract

Fungicides reduce fungal pathogen populations and are essential to food security. Understanding the impacts of fungicides on crop microbiomes is vital to minimizing unintended consequences while maintaining their use for plant protection. However, fungicide disturbance of plant microbiomes has received limited attention, and has not been examined in different agricultural management systems. We used amplicon sequencing of fungi and prokaryotes in maize and soybean microbiomes before and after foliar fungicide application in leaves and roots from plots under long-term no-till and conventional tillage management. We examined fungicide disturbance and resilience, which revealed consistent non-target effects and greater resiliency under no-till management. Fungicides lowered pathogen abundance in maize and soybean and decreased the abundance of Tremellomycetes yeasts, especially Bulleribasidiaceae, including core microbiome members. Fungicide application reduced network complexity in the soybean phyllosphere, which revealed altered co-occurrence patterns between yeast species of Bulleribasidiaceae, and Sphingomonas and Hymenobacter in fungicide treated plots. Results indicate that foliar fungicides lower pathogen and non-target fungal abundance and may impact prokaryotes indirectly. Treatment effects were confined to the phyllosphere and did not impact belowground microbial communities. Overall, these results demonstrate the resilience of no-till management to fungicide disturbance, a potential novel ecosystem service provided by no-till agriculture.

Highlights

Disturbances from chemical applications in agriculture reduce the abundance of pests and pathogens and are common in modern agricultural ecosystems [1,2,3,4,5]
% recovery compared to the 34 % recovery in the conventional fungicide-imposed disturbance and resiliency under different tilled soybean (Fig. 3b; Table S9)
We found that fungicide locally extinct following fungicide application in soybean with applications had a substantial effect on target and non-target conventional tillage compared to one in the no-till plots (Fig. 3b). fungal phyllosphere communities, minor indirect effect on

Summary

Introduction

Disturbances from chemical applications in agriculture reduce the abundance of pests and pathogens and are common in modern agricultural ecosystems [1,2,3,4,5]. Recovered taxa (i.e., transient effects) were defined as fOTUs that were significantly less abundant in the first sampling following fungicide treatment but were not significantly less abundant from non-disturbed plots, after 33- or 34-dpf, for soybean or maize, respectively.

Results

Conclusion