Plant Health and Sound Vibration: Analyzing Implications of the Microbiome in Grape Wine Leaves.

Birgit Wassermann,Lise Korsten,Gabriele Berg

doi:10.3390/pathogens10010063

Birgit Wassermann, Lise Korsten + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10010063

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Abstract

Understanding the plant microbiome is a key for plant health and controlling pathogens. Recent studies have shown that plants are responsive towards natural and synthetic sound vibration (SV) by perception and signal transduction, which resulted in resistance towards plant pathogens. However, whether or not native plant microbiomes respond to SV and the underlying mechanism thereof remains unknown. Within the present study we compared grapevine-associated microbiota that was perpetually exposed to classical music with a non-exposed control group from the same vineyard in Stellenbosch, South Africa. By analyzing the 16S rRNA gene and ITS fragment amplicon libraries we found differences between the core microbiome of SV-exposed leaves and the control group. For several of these different genera, e.g., Bacillus, Kocuria and Sphingomonas, a host-beneficial or pathogen-antagonistic effect has been well studied. Moreover, abundances of taxa identified as potential producers of volatile organic compounds that contribute to sensory characteristics of wines, e.g., Methylobacterium, Sphingomonas, Bacillus and Sporobolomyces roseus, were either increased or even unique within the core music-exposed phyllosphere population. Results show an as yet unexplored avenue for improved plant health and the terroir of wine, which are important for environmentally friendly horticulture and consumer appreciation. Although our findings explain one detail of the long-term positive experience to improve grapevine’s resilience by this unusual but innovative technique, more mechanistic studies are necessary to understand the whole interplay.

Highlights

Plants and their associated microbes have been interacting with each other for a long time, forming assemblages of species that is referred to as a holobiont [1,2]
Quality filtering using the DADA2 algorithm, removal of chimeric sequences and additional removal of mitochondrial and chloroplast sequences from the 16S rRNA gene fragments, yielded a 16S rRNA dataset containing 108,450 paired reads, assigned to 844 features and an internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region dataset consisting of 740,348 paired reads, assigned to 337 fungal features
“Control” samples contained the same classes with abundances of 36%, 17%, 26% and 8%, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Plants and their associated microbes have been interacting with each other for a long time, forming assemblages of species that is referred to as a holobiont [1,2]. Plant-associated microorganisms trigger important processes in plants, e.g., germination, circadian and annual cycles, fruit and seed formation and significantly contribute to plant health [4]. Each healthy plant microbiome contains potential pathogenic microorganisms and their antagonistic counterparts, which together form a balanced functional network [5]. Antagonistic mechanisms, which convey this balance, are used for a long time to biologically control pathogens (reviewed [6,7]). Plantassociated microorganisms are able to directly activate the plant defense system by induced systemic resistance (ISR), which sometimes overlaps partly with that of pathogen-induced systemic acquired resistance (SAR); both ISR and SAR represent a state of enhanced basal persistence of the plant that depends on the signaling compounds jasmonic acid and salicylic acid [9]

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