Drought is a major abiotic stress affecting plant growth and development. Sugarcane, a sugar crop planted in warmer climate, suffers dramatically from drought stress. Bacterial communities colonizing the rhizosphere, where roots sense drought stress initially, have been well studied for their beneficial effects on plant growth and health. The Ea-DREB2B gene cloned from the sugarcane, Saccharum arundinaceum, belongs to the DREB2 subgroup of the DREB gene family, which is involved in drought response regulation. Here, we present a detailed characterization of the rhizoplane, rhizosphere, and bulk soil bacterial communities determined using a high-sequencing approach with the transgenic (TG) sugarcane variety GN18 harboring the drought-tolerant Ea-DREB2B gene and its isogenic wild-type (WT) variety FN95-1702 under the same environmental conditions. In addition, the total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) contents in each soil area were compared to explore the relationship between bacterial alteration in the TG and WT plants and environmental factors (TC, TN, TP, C:N, C:P, and N:P). Our results showed that the bacterial communities in the rhizosphere and rhizoplane of TG sugarcane were more similar and perfectly correlated with the environmental factors than those of the WT. This suggested that the bacterial communities of the TG plants were altered in response to the changes in root exudates. The results of our study suggest that the change in soil environment caused by transgenic sugarcane alters soil bacterial communities.
Drought limits crop productivity, especially of sugarcane, which is predominantly grown in the subtropical parts of China. Soil microbes perform a wide range of functions that are important for plant productivity and responses to drought stress, and fungi play an important role in plant-soil interactions. The Ea-DREB2B gene of sugarcane, Saccharum arundinaceum, is involved in regulating the response to drought stress. In this study, fungal communities of the transgenic (TG) sugarcane variety GN18, harboring the drought-tolerant gene Ea-DREB2B and its corresponding non-TG wild-type (WT) variety, FN95-1702, were investigated in three soil compartments (rhizoplane, rhizosphere, and bulk soil) by assessing the internal transcribed spacer region using Illumina MiSeq. As the soil microbial community is also affected by various environmental factors, such as pH, carbon availability, and soil moisture, we determined the total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP) contents in the rhizoplane, rhizosphere, and bulk soil compartments to explore the associations between soil fungal communities and host plant characteristics. The differences between the soil fungal communities of TG and WT plants were detected. The alpha diversity of TG fungal communities was more correlated to environmental factors than the beta diversity. The abundance of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) enriched in TG root-related area was far more than that in the root-related area of WT plants. Thereinto, more saprotrophs were enriched in the TG root-related area, indicating altered niches of fungal guilds around TG roots. These results revealed that host plant genotype did play a key role for strengthening plant-fungi interaction and enhancing beneficial fungal function in the root-related area (rhizoplane and rhizosphere) of TG sugarcane in order to respond to drought stress.
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