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Association of Microbiome Diversity with Disease Symptoms in <i>Brassica oleracea</i> Leaves
oleh: Héctor Martín-Cardoso, Víctor M. González-Miguel, Luis Soler-López, Sonia Campo, Blanca San Segundo
Format: | Article |
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Diterbitkan: | MDPI AG 2024-07-01 |
Deskripsi
Cabbage (<i>Brassica oleracea</i>), a crop of major economic importance worldwide, is affected by numerous diseases, which are caused by a wide range of microorganisms, including fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, and viruses, which lead to important losses in yield and quality. The increasing availability of reference genomes of plant-associated microbes together with recent advances in metagenomic approaches provide new opportunities to identify microbes linked to distinct symptomatology in <i>Brassica</i> leaves. In this study, shotgun metagenomics was used to investigate the microbial community in leaves of <i>B. oleracea</i> plants from agricultural farmlands. Compared with conventional techniques based on culture-based methods, whole-genome shotgun sequencing allows the reliable identification of the microbial population inhabiting a plant tissue at the species level. Asymptomatic and symptomatic leaves showing different disease symptoms were examined. In the asymptomatic leaves, <i>Xanthomonas</i> species were the most abundant taxa. The relative abundance of bacterial and fungal communities varied depending on disease symptoms on the leaf. The microbiome of the leaves showing mild to severe levels of disease was enriched in bacterial populations (<i>Sphingomonas</i>, <i>Methylobacterium</i>, <i>Paracoccus</i>) and to a lesser degree in some fungal taxa, such as <i>Alternaria</i> and <i>Colletotrichum</i> (e.g., in leaves with high levels of necrotic lesions). <i>Sclerotinia</i> species were highly abundant in severely damaged leaves (<i>S. sclerotium</i>, <i>S. trifolium</i>, <i>S. bolearis</i>), followed by <i>Botrytis</i> species. The common and specific bacterial and fungal species associated to disease symptoms were identified. Finally, the analysis of the gene functions in the metagenomic data revealed enrichment in carbohydrate-active enzymes potentially involved in pathogenicity, whose distribution also varied among disease severity groups. Understanding the <i>B. oleracea</i> leaf microbiome in agricultural ecosystems will pave the way for the efficient management of diseases in this crop.