Tomato Cultivars With Variable Tolerances to Water Deficit Differentially Modulate the Composition and Interaction Patterns of Their Rhizosphere Microbial Communities.

ABSTRACT: Since drought is the leading environmental factor limiting crop productivity, and plants have a significant impact in defining the assembly of plant-specific microbial communities associated with roots, we aimed to determine the effect of thoroughly selected water deficit tolerant and susceptible Solanum lycopersicum cultivars on their rhizosphere microbiome and compared their response with plant-free soil microbial communities. We identified a total of 4,248 bacterial and 276 fungal different operational taxonomic units (OTUs) in soils by massive sequencing. We observed that tomato cultivars significantly affected the alpha and beta diversity of their bacterial rhizosphere communities but not their fungal communities compared with bulk soils (BSs), showing a plant effect exclusivel

SUBMITTER: Gaete A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8313812 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature