Soil is one of the key elements for supporting life on Earth. It delivers multiple ecosystem services, which are provided by soil processes and functions performed by soil biodiversity. In particular, soil microbiome is one of the fundamental components in the sustainment of plant biomass production and plant health. Both targeted and untargeted management of soil microbial communities appear to be promising in the sustainable improvement of food crop yield, its nutritional quality and safety. –Omics approaches, which allow the assessment of microbial phylogenetic diversity and functional information, have increasingly been used in recent years to study changes in soil microbial diversity caused by agronomic practices and environmental factors. The application of these high-throughput technologies to the study of soil microbial diversity, plant health and the quality of derived raw materials will help strengthen the link between soil well-being, food quality, food safety and human health.
Biochar porous structure can be considered a shelter for soil beneficial microorganisms, as they can be protected against grazers or competitors. At this purpose, bacteria which colonize biochar-amended soil can be isolated, characterized, and tested in combination with chars deriving from different feedstocks, which can be used as inoculum carriers. In this work, cultivable bacterial strains were isolated from a three-year maize-biochar-amended soil. Morphologically different bacterial isolates were characterized by amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis (ARDRA) followed by 16S rDNA sequencing of those presenting different profiles. Twelve strains were characterized by multiple plant growth-promoting properties, as siderophores and acid-3indolacetic production, and ACC deaminase activity. An environmental scanning electron microscope was utilized to visualize in vivo bacteria biofilm formation on plant roots and biochar derived from a different feedstock. Most of the identified bacterial strains were found to be homologous with plant growth-promoting bacteria, among those Arthrobacter, Pseudomonas, Microbacterium, Bosea, and Variovorax genera, capable to synthetize high levels of IAA, produce siderophores and ACC deaminase. In addition, Bioch1, Bioch2, Bioch4, and Bioch7 strains were shown to colonize biochar deriving from a poplar wood feedstock and to create biofilms on plant roots. The results of this study indicate that beneficial soil bacteria can colonize a long-term biochar-amended soil and open the interesting possibility for the selected bacteria to be utilized as biochar carriermediated biofertilizers in agricultural soils.
Perennial grains provide various ecosystem services compared to the annual counterparts thanks to their extensive root system and permanent soil cover. However, little is known about the evolution and diversification of perennial grains rhizosphere and its ecological functions over time. In this study, a suite of -OMICSs - metagenomics, enzymomics, metabolomics and lipidomics - was used to compare the rhizosphere environment of four perennial wheat lines at the first and fourth year of growth in comparison with an annual durum wheat cultivar and the parental species Thinopyrum intermedium. We hypothesized that wheat perenniality has a greater role in shaping the rhizobiome composition, biomass, diversity, and activity than plant genotypes because perenniality affects the quality and quantity of C input – mainly root exudates – hence modulating the plant-microbes crosstalk. In support of this hypothesis, the continuous supply of sugars in the rhizosphere along the years created a favorable environment for microbial growth which is reflected in a higher microbial biomass and enzymatic activity. Moreover, modification in the rhizosphere metabolome and lipidome over the years led to changes in the microbial community composition favoring the coexistence of more diverse microbial taxa, increasing plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Despite the dominance of the perenniality effect, our data underlined that the OK72 line rhizobiome distinguished from the others by the increase in abundance of Pseudomonas spp., most of which are known as potential beneficial microorganisms, identifying this line as a suitable candidate for the study and selection of new perennial wheat lines.
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