Abstract Detail

Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Swift, Joel [1], Miller, Allison [2], Kwasniewski, Misha [3], Hall, Megan [4].

The root of it all: Factors influencing plant-associated microorganism communities in Vitis.

Plants have multiple organs (e.g. roots, leaves, fruits, etc.) with each acting as a potentially unique habitat for microorganisms due to variation in structural characteristics, environmental conditions, and resource availability. To understand how one organ can influence the microbiome of another, we used grafting, the horticultural technique of joining different plant organs together to form a vascular connection. Grapevines (Vitis spp.) are commonly grown by grafting the shoot system of a particular cultivar to a different root system (rootstock). We examined ‘Chambourcin’ (a French-American hybrid grapevine) growing ungrafted and grafted to three different rootstocks (‘3309C’, ‘1103P’, ‘SO4’) across three irrigation treatments in Mount Vernon, MO. We sampled soil, roots, leaves and berries from each vine at harvest and used 16S and ITS barcoding to assess the bacterial and fungal diversity. We found significant variation in alpha diversity (Shannon’s index) across compartments, with each compartment also having distinct bacterial and fungal taxa. Soil, followed by roots, were consistently the most diverse. For bacterial taxa, leaves and berries had similar levels of diversity, whereas for fungal taxa, berries were more diverse than leaves. Across rootstocks, there was no significant difference in beta diversity metrics (UniFrac and Bray-Curtis), however, individual taxa did differ significantly. For instance, we found that the relative abundance of microorganisms implicated in the disease sour rot were influenced by complex interactions involving rootstocks, irrigation treatments, and compartments. Our results indicate that rootstock choice has a subtle but significant impact on microorganism communities. Future work will be required to determine if taxa which are differentially abundant across rootstocks have a functional impact on the plant and lead to variation in agriculturally important traits such as yield.

1 - Saint Louis University, Biology, Macelwane Hall 301, 3507 Laclede Ave., Saint Louis, MO, 63110, USA
2 - Saint Louis Univ./Danforth Plant Science Center, Biology, 3507 Laclede Avenue, Macelwane Hall, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States
3 - The Pennsylvania State University, Food Science, 326 Rodney A. Erickson Food Science Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
4 - The University of Missouri, Plant Sciences, 102 Waters Hall, Columbia, MO, 35211, USA

Keywords:
microbiome
Grapevine
Rootstock.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: SYMB2, Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions II
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Wednesday, July 29th, 2020
Time: 10:45 AM
Number: SYMB2004
Abstract ID:601
Candidate for Awards:None