Insights into endophytic bacterial diversity of rice grown across the different agro-ecological regions of West Bengal, India

Abstract

Endophytes have recently garnered importance worldwide and multiple studies are being conducted to understand their important role and mechanism of interaction inside plants. But before we indulge in their functions it is necessary to dig into the microbiome. This will help to get a complete picture of the microbes intrinsic to their host and understand changes in community composition with respect to their habitats. To ful l this requirement in our study we have attempted to dissect the endophytic diversity in roots of rice plant grown across the various agro-ecological zones of West Bengal by undergoing amplicon analysis of their 16S rRNA gene. We found that the agro-ecological zones can be divided into two groups: nutrient dense (GAZ, NHZ and TTAZ) and nutrient low groups (CSZ, RLZ and VAZ). Few genera (Aeromonas, Sulfurospirillum, Uliginosibacterium, etc.) are present in samples cultivated in all the zones representing the core microbiome of rice in West Bengal while some other genera like Lactococcus, Dickeya, Azonexus, Pectobacterium, etc. are unique to speci c zone. It can be concluded that understanding which particular endophytes cohabit with the internal plant environment can play an important role in endophyte-based stress management strategy. Introduction:Rice is the most important staple food for more than half the world's population. India is one of the leading producers and consumer of rice and the state of West Bengal is one of the highest producers of rice in India (Kunda et al., 2018). However, rice production is impeded by several abiotic and biotic factors. Therefore, to improve the productivity of crops, farmers apply a wide range of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which in excess leave eco-toxic residues in the soil and in longer term, decrease crop productivity (Kumar Bag, 2011). These toxic chemicals are also responsible for global warming and groundwater pollution (Mashiane et al., 2017). To combat these problems, recent developments are being made to use potential microorganisms to manage biotic and abiotic stress and improve plant growth for a healthier environment (Edwards et al., 2015;Mashiane et al., 2017). Microbiomes associated with plants roots are known to play a signi cant role in hastening plant growth, development and can alter plant health as well as their stress tolerance abilities (Lareen et al., 2016). These microbes can reside either in the rhizopsheric soil in close association with the roots or can remain inside the plant as endophytes (Olanrewaju et al., 2017). Symbiotic bacterial endophytes of rice provide multiple bene ts to their host. They adapt different mechanisms to protect plants from various stressful conditions like drought, salinity, pathogen attack (Khare et al., 2018;Mukhtar et al., 2019). They do so by increasing carbon and nitrogen metabolism, enhancing photosynthetic activity as well as detoxifying enzymes activities, reducing damage caused by reactive oxygen species, producing osmotic regulators, ACC deaminase enzyme, various phytohormones and also...

Endophytic bacterial communities in wild rice (Oryza officinalis) and their plant growth-promoting effects on perennial rice

“…Compared to previous studies, the endophytic bacterial composition of wild rice and cultivated rice is consistent at the phylum level and class level regardless of genetic and ecological distance. Proteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria are typically the dominant phylum and class in rice, respectively ( Moronta-Barrios et al., 2018 ; Kim and Lee, 2020 ; Lin et al., 2020 ; Chu et al., 2021 ; Kunda et al., 2021 ; Peng et al., 2021 ).…”

Shifts in the diversity of root endophytic microorganisms across the life cycle of the ratooning rice Jiafuzhan

“…The structures of the root endophytic microbiomes of several plants including Arabidopsis thaliana (Chen et al, 2020a), rice (Edwards et al, 2015;Zhang et al, 2019a;Hu et al, 2020;Zhong et al, 2020), maize (Walters et al, 2018;Fadiji et al, 2020a,b), and sugarcane (Dong et al, 2018) have been analyzed using highthroughput sequencing. The soil characteristics in different regions affect microbial diversity (Zhang et al, 2019a;Kunda et al, 2021). The genotype of plants also has an impact on the diversity of root endophytic microorganisms, as reported in Arabidopsis thaliana (Bai et al, 2015), rice (Zhang et al, 2019a;Hu et al, 2020), maize (Walters et al, 2018), and sugarcane (Dong et al, 2018).…”

Analysis of Endophytic Bacterial Diversity in Seeds of Different Genotypes of Cotton and the Suppression of Verticillium Wilt Pathogen Infection by a Synthetic Microbial Community

“…Notably, although different studies have identi ed endophytic bacterial populations in the seeds of the same species, their abundance, diversity, and community structure may vary across studies. This can be owing to factors, such as seed structure, developmental stage, chemical composition, and genotype [17,18]. This re ects the co-evolution of hosts and their seed microbiota [19].…”