Bacterial Communities in the Embryo of Maize Landraces: Relation with Susceptibility to Fusarium Ear Rot

Microorganisms

Alessandro Passera¹  Paola Casati¹  Fabio Quaglino¹  Giovanni Venturini¹  Niccolò Miotti¹  Martina Ghidoli¹  Roberto Pilu¹  Alessia Follador¹  Stefano Morandi²  Milena Brasca²  Davide Bulgarelli³ 

[1] Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences–Production, Landscape, Agroenergy, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, Italy;Institute of Sciences of Food Production, Italian National Research Council, Via Celoria 2, 20133 Milan, Italy;Plant Sciences, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Invergowrie DD2 5DA, UK;

关键词: Fusarium verticillioides;    16S metabarcoding;    digital PCR;    RAPD;    Firmicutes;   

DOI  :  10.3390/microorganisms9112388

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Locally adapted maize accessions (landraces) represent an untapped resource of nutritional and resistance traits for breeding, including the shaping of distinct microbiota. Our study focused on five different maize landraces and a reference commercial hybrid, showing different susceptibility to fusarium ear rot, and whether this trait could be related to particular compositions of the bacterial microbiota in the embryo, using different approaches. Our cultivation-independent approach utilized the metabarcoding of a portion of the 16S rRNA gene to study bacterial populations in these samples. Multivariate statistical analyses indicated that the microbiota of the embryos of the accessions grouped in two different clusters: one comprising three landraces and the hybrid, one including the remaining two landraces, which showed a lower susceptibility to fusarium ear rot in field. The main discriminant between these clusters was the frequency of Firmicutes, higher in the second cluster, and this abundance was confirmed by quantification through digital PCR. The cultivation-dependent approach allowed the isolation of 70 bacterial strains, mostly Firmicutes. In vivo assays allowed the identification of five candidate biocontrol strains against fusarium ear rot. Our data revealed novel insights into the role of the maize embryo microbiota and set the stage for further studies aimed at integrating this knowledge into plant breeding programs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown