Golf courses have a significant environmental impact. High water demands and the intensive use of agricultural chemicals have been a concern for decades and are therefore in the focus of efforts to make golf courses more environmentally sustainable. Products based on modifying or using plant-associated microbiota are one of the fastest-growing sectors in agriculture, but their application on turfgrasses on golf courses is so far negligible. In this review, we summarize the limited knowledge on microbiomes of golf turf ecosystems and show that the lack of holistic studies addressing the structure and function of golf turf microbiomes, including their responses to intense turf management procedures, is currently the main bottleneck for development and improvement of reliable, well-functioning microbial products. We further highlight the endosphere of turfgrasses, which is easily accessible for microbial cultivation through constant mowing, as the most stable and protected micro-environment. Many grass species do possess endophytic bacteria and fungi that have been shown to improve the plants’ resistance towards microbial pathogens and insect pests, and several products using endophyte-enhanced grass varieties are commercially successful. We anticipated that this trend would tee-off on golf courses, too, once a more comprehensive understanding of golf turf microbiomes is available.
Turfgrass landscapes have expanded rapidly in recent decades and are a major vegetation type in urbanizing ecosystems. While turfgrass areas provide numerous ecosystem services in urban environments, ecological side effects from intensive management are raising concerns regarding their sustainability. One potentially promising approach to ameliorate the ecological impact and decrease the use of agricultural chemicals is to take advantage of naturally evolved turfgrass-associated microbes by harnessing beneficial services provided by microbiomes. Unfortunately, especially compared to agricultural crops, the microbiomes of turfgrasses are not well understood. Here, we analyzed microbial communities inhabiting the leaf and root endospheres as well as soil in two bermudagrass cultivars, ‘Latitude 36′ and ‘TifTuf’, which exhibit distinct tolerance to nematode damage, with the goal of identifying potential differences in the microbiomes that might explain their distinct phenotype. We used 16S rRNA gene V4 and ITS2 amplicon sequencing to characterize the microbiomes in combination with microbial cultivation efforts to identify potentially beneficial endophytic fungi and bacteria. Our results show that Latitude 36 and TifTuf showed markedly different fungal microbiomes, each harboring unique taxa from Ascomycota and Glomeromycota, respectively. In contrast, less difference was observed from bacterial and archaeal microbiomes, which were dominated by Bacteroidetes and Thaumarchaeota, respectively. The TifTuf microbiomes exhibited lower microbial diversity compared to Latitude 36. Many sequences could not be classified to a higher taxonomic resolution, indicating a relatively high abundance of hitherto undescribed microorganisms. Our results provide new insights into the structure and composition of turfgrass microbiomes but also raise important questions regarding the functional attributes of key taxa.
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