Symbiotic interactions between chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) genotypes and Mesorhizobium strains

A H Gunnabo,K E Giller,R Geurts,T Degefu,J Van Heerwaarden,E Wolde-Meskel

doi:10.1007/s13199-020-00724-6

Abstract

Legume genotype (GL) x rhizobium genotype (GR) interaction in chickpea was studied using a genetically diverse set of accessions and rhizobium strains in modified Leonard Jars. A subset of effective GL x GR combinations was subsequently evaluated in a pot experiment to identify combinations of chickpea genotypes and rhizobium strains with stable and superior symbiotic performance. A linear mixed model was employed to analyse the occurrence of GL x GR interaction and an additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) model was used to study patterns in the performance of genotype-strain combinations. We found statistically significant interaction in jars in terms of symbiotic effectiveness that was entirely due to the inclusion of one of the genotypes, ICC6263. No interaction was found in a subsequent pot experiment. The presence of two genetic groups (Kabuli and Desi genepools) did not affect interaction with Mesorhizobium strains. With the exception of a negative interaction with genotype ICC6263 in the jar experiment, the type strain Mesorhizobium ciceri LMG 14989 outperformed or equalled other strains on all chickpea genotypes in both jar and pot experiments. Similar to earlier reports in common bean, our results suggest that efforts to find more effective strains may be more rewarding than aiming for identification of superior combinations of strains and genotypes.

Highlights

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an ancient legume crop of great economic importance; ranked third among the grain legumes in the world’s agriculture after soybean and common bean (Plekhanova et al 2017; Vishnyakova et al 2017)
The symbiotic gene phylogenies grouped the local strains together with most of the previously reported chickpea nodulating type strains such as M. ciceri, M. meditteraneum, M. wenxiniae, M. haukuii and M. muleiense (Fig. 2) suggesting that the local Mesorhizobia
Screening for the best fitting symbiotic partners is recommended since significant host genotype x rhizobium strain interactions have been demonstrated in many legumes such as common bean (Hungria and Neves 1987; Epping et al 1994; Montealegre and Kipe-Nolt 1994), Bambara groundnut (Somasegaran et al 1990), lentil (Rai et al 1985), pea (Laguerre et al 2007), soybean (Devine and Kuykendall 1996), lotus (Regus et al 2015), white clover (Mytton 1975), peanut (Wynne et al 1983), Medicago (Heath et al 2012) and Acacia (Barrett et al 2015)

Summary

Introduction

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is an ancient legume crop of great economic importance; ranked third among the grain legumes in the world’s agriculture after soybean and common bean (Plekhanova et al 2017; Vishnyakova et al 2017). It originated from Southeast Turkey and Syria, having its primary centre of diversity there with secondary centres of diversity. The application of rhizobial inoculants has been proposed as a cost-effective way to enhance yields of chickpea (Wolde-meskel et al 2018)

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Conclusion