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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Cereal Disease Lab » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #330226
Title: Plant diversity and plant identity influence Fusarium communities in soil

Author
item LEBLANC, NICHOLAS - University Of Minnesota
item KINKEL, LINDA - University Of Minnesota
item Kistler, Harold

Submitted to: Mycologia
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/17/2016
Publication Date: 1/27/2017
Citation: LeBlanc, N., Kinkel, L.L., Kistler, H.C. 2017. Plant diversity and plant identity influence Fusarium communities in soil. Mycologia. 109:128-139.

Interpretive Summary: While historically, plant pathologists have focused on understanding fungi that cause disease in plants, many fungi are known to be helpful to plant health and vigor. However, little is known about the overall composition of fungi inhabiting the soil or growing endophytically within healthy plants. Many fungal species grow slowly, lack readily distinguishable traits and /or are recalcitrant to isolation in pure culture and so only a fraction of fungal species have been described even from well-studied agricultural plants and soils. This study uses high thoroughput DNA sequencing to characterize the fungi associated with soil at the base of two plant species. These plant species were grown alone, simulating agricultural monoculture, or together with several other species, simulating more natural grassland environments. Both the indivdual plant species as well as the plant context (monoculture versus "polyculture") greatly influences the types and diversity of fungi that exist in these plant associated soils. These observations likely will influence thinking and planning of cropping systems arising from agricultural monoculture and intercropping and their impact on fungal soil communities and plant health. The primary users of the research in this publication will be other scientists engaged in research to improve disease management on small grain crops.

Technical Abstract: Fusarium communities play important functional roles in soil and in-planta as pathogens, endophytes, and saprotrophs. This study tests how rhizosphere Fusarium communities may vary according to plant species, differences in species richness of the surrounding plant community, and soil physiochemical characteristics. Soil Fusarium communities associated with the roots of two perennial prairie plant species maintained as monocultures or growing within polyculture plant communities were characterized using targeted-metagenomics. Amplicon libraries targeting the RPB2 locus were generated from rhizosphere soil DNAs and sequenced using pyrosequencing. Sequences were clustered into OTUs and assigned a taxonomy using the Evolutionary Placement Algorithm. Fusarium community composition was differentiated between monoculture and polyculture plant communities, and by plant species in monoculture, but not in polyculture. Taxonomic classification of the Fusarium OTUs showed a predominance of F. tricinctum and F. oxysporum as well of the presence of a clade previously only found in the Southern Hemisphere. Total Fusarium richness was not affected by changes in plant community richness or correlated with soil physiochemical characteristics. However, OTU richness within two predominant phylogenetic lineages within the genus were positively or negatively correlated with soil physiochemical characteristics among samples within each lineage. This work shows plant species, plant community richness or soil physiochemical characteristics may all influence the structure and richness of Fusarium communities in soil.