Analyses Of The Rhizosphere Microbiota In Three Different Crop Systems (Conventional, Organic And Syntropic Agriculture), Using A Portuguese Maize Population And Ccp (‘Pigarro’ And ‘Sinpre’).

Summary

Maize is one of the most important crops in the world for feed and food, which makes its contribution to organic farming crucial. The adaptation to organic agriculture can depend on the interaction between the microbiota present in the rhizosphere, allowing a more efficient extraction of nutrients from the soil for growth and development.The aim of our study was to understand how different production systems (conventional, organic) and different open-pollinated maize populations (‘SinPre’ and ‘Pigarro’) can influence the rhizosphere microbiota.The data collected from the maize trial comprehends phenological data plus the structural diversity of the bacterial and fungal communities from the maize rhizosphere.Three replicates of three plants by two maize populations were collected for each cultivation system, at a depth of approximately 15 cm, forming a total of 15 composite samples. The bacterial microbiota was determined from DNA extracted from maize rhizosphere samples based on the V3-V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA and from ITS2 region of the fungal ITS gene using Illumina’s MiSeq sequencing.From our results, we can conclude that the farming system has an impact on fungal diversity since a higher diversity was found in organic farming systems when compared with the conventional. In addition, the fungal microbiota was more diverse in ‘Pigarro’ rhizosphere in comparison with ‘SinPre’.Comparing the diversity between ‘Pigarro and ‘SinPre’ bacterial populations, the first presented always the highest number of genera despite the farming system. Contrarily to what we observed for the fungal diversity, the number of shared bacteria was similar in both farming systems.The main conclusion was that the farming systems have significant impact in maize rhizosphere microbiota. In addition, the maize rhizosphere microbiota is population specific.