A Community-Based Culture Collection for Targeting Novel Plant Growth-Promoting Bacteria from the Sugarcane Microbiome

Author(s)

Leite Armanhi, Jaderson Silveira ^{[1, 2]} ; Correa de Souza, Rafael Soares ^{[1, 2]} ; Damasceno, Natalia de Brito ^{[1, 2]} ; de Araujo, Laura M. ^{[1, 2]} ; Imperial, Juan ^{[3, 4]} ; Arruda, Paulo ^{[1, 2]}

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Estadual Campinas, Ctr Biol Mol & Engn Genet, Campinas, SP - Brazil

^[2] Univ Estadual Campinas, Inst Biol, Dept Genet & Evolucao, Campinas, SP - Brazil

^[3] Univ Politecn Madrid, Inst Nacl Invest & Tecnol Agr & Alimentaria, Ctr Biotecnol & Genom Plantas, Madrid - Spain

^[4] CSIC, Madrid - Spain

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE; v. 8, JAN 4 2018.
• Web of Science Citations: 9

Abstract

The soil-plant ecosystem harbors an immense microbial diversity that challenges investigative approaches to study traits underlying plant-microbe association. Studies solely based on culture-dependent techniques have overlooked most microbial diversity. Here we describe the concomitant use of culture-dependent and -independent techniques to target plant-beneficial microbial groups from the sugarcane microbiome. The community-based culture collection (CBC) approach was used to access microbes from roots and stalks. The CBC recovered 399 unique bacteria representing 15.9% of the rhizosphere core microbiome and 61.6-65.3% of the endophytic core microbiomes of stalks. By cross-referencing the CBC (culture-dependent) with the sugarcane microbiome profile (culture-independent), we designed a synthetic community comprised of naturally occurring highly abundant bacterial groups from roots and stalks, most of which has been poorly explored so far. We then used maize as a model to probe the abundance-based synthetic inoculant. We show that when inoculated in maize plants, members of the synthetic community efficiently colonize plant organs, displace the natural microbiota and dominate at 53.9% of the rhizosphere microbial abundance. As a result, inoculated plants increased biomass by 3.4-fold as compared to uninoculated plants. The results demonstrate that abundance-based synthetic inoculants can be successfully applied to recover beneficial plant microbes from plant microbiota. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 16/04322-0 - Cross-talk between microorganism-microorganism and plant-microorganism from a representative bacterial collection of the sugarcane microbiome
• Grantee: Jaderson Silveira Leite Armanhi
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• FAPESP's process: 16/23425-5 - Mapping the colonization of a synthetic microbial community inoculum from sugarcane microbiome in maize and soybean plants
• Grantee: Natália de Brito Damasceno
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master