1. Root isolations of Metarhizium spp. from crops reflect diversity in the soil and indicate no plant specificity.
- Author
-
Steinwender, Bernhardt M., Enkerli, Jürg, Widmer, Franco, Eilenberg, Jørgen, Kristensen, Hanne L., Bidochka, Michael J., and Meyling, Nicolai V.
- Subjects
- *
METARHIZIUM , *PLANT roots , *MICROBIOLOGY , *PHYTOPATHOGENIC fungi , *PLANT diversity , *COLLECTION & preservation of plant specimens , *AGRICULTURAL ecology - Abstract
Metarhizium spp. have recently been shown to be associated with the roots of different plants. Here we evaluated which Metarhizium species were associated with roots of oat ( Avena sativa ), rye ( Secale cereale ) and cabbage ( Brassica oleracea ), common crop plants in Denmark. Thirty-six root samples from each of the three crops were collected within an area of approximately 3 ha. The roots were rinsed with sterile water, homogenized and the homogenate plated onto selective media. A subset of 126 Metarhizium isolates were identified to species by sequencing of the 5′ end of the gene translation elongation factor 1-alpha and characterized by simple sequence repeat (SSR) analysis of 14 different loci. Metarhizium brunneum was the most common species isolated from plant roots (84.1% of all isolates), while M. robertsii (11.1%) and M. majus (4.8%) comprised the remainder. The SSR analysis revealed that six multilocus genotypes (MLGs) were present among the M. brunneum and M. robertsii isolates, respectively. A single MLG of M. brunneum represented 66.7%, 79.1% and 79.2% of the total isolates obtained from oat, rye and cabbage, respectively. The isolation of Metarhizium spp. and their MLGs from roots revealed a comparable community composition as previously reported from the same agroecosystem when insect baiting of soil samples was used as isolating technique. No specific MLG association with a certain crop was found. This study highlights the diversity of Metarhizium spp. found in the rhizosphere of different crops within a single agroecosystem and suggests that plants either recruit fungal associates from the surrounding soil environment or even govern the composition of Metarhizium populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF