This work is publishedin Microbiology Spectrum.
The raw data for this study are available in the NCBI SRA under bioproject PRJNA635871
Bintarti, AF, P Kearns, A Sulesky and A Shade. 2022. Abiotic treatment to common bean plants results in an altered seed microbiome. Microbiology Spectrum 10:e0021021. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.00210-21.
We performed a pilot study in a controlled growth chamber to investigate how the seed microbiome of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L. (var. Redhawk)) is altered under abiotic conditions that are relevant for crop management given global climate change. Bean plants were subjected to one of three treatments: 66% water withholding to simulate mild drought, 50 % Hoagland nutrient solution to simulate fertilization, or control with sufficient water and nutrition. We performed 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and ITS amplicon sequencing of the endophytic metagenomic DNA to assess seed bacterial/archaeal and fungal community structure, respectively. We found that both water withholding and nutrient addition altered the seed microbiome structure for bacterial/archaeal communities as compared to the untreated control. There were no statistically supported differences in the fungal microbiome across treatments. While limitations of the experiment preclude the ability to draw general conclusions, these promising results suggest that further and more comprehensive investigation is needed to better understand stress-induced changes in the seed microbiome, the mechanisms that drive those changes, and the implications of seed microbiome changes for the health and stress responses of the next plant generation.
This work was supported by the Michigan State University Plant Resilience Institute, by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture award USDA 2019-67019-29305, and by Michigan State AgBioResearch.