Plants interact with a myriad of microbial cells in the rhizosphere, an environment that is considered to be important for plant development. However, the differential structuring of rhizosphere microbial communities due to plant cultivation under differential agricultural practices remains to be described for most plant species. Here we describe the rhizosphere microbiome of grapevine cultivated under conventional and organic practices, using a combination of cultivation-independent approaches. The quantification of bacterial 16S rRNA and nifH genes, by quantitative PCR (qPCR), revealed similar amounts of these genes in the rhizosphere in both vineyards. PCR-DGGE was used to detect differences in the structure of bacterial communities, including both the complete whole communities and specific fractions, such as Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and those harboring the nitrogen-fixing related gene nifH. When analyzed by a multivariate approach (redundancy analysis), the shifts observed in the bacterial communities were poorly explained by variations in the physical and chemical characteristics of the rhizosphere. These approaches were complemented by high-throughput sequencing (67,830 sequences) based on the V6 region of the 16S rRNA gene, identifying the major bacterial groups present in the rhizosphere of grapevines: Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteriodetes, Acidobacteria, Cloroflexi, Verrucomicrobia and Planctomycetes, which occur in distinct proportions in the rhizosphere from each vineyard. The differences might be related to the selection of plant metabolism upon distinct reservoirs of microbial cells found in each vineyard. The results fill a gap in the knowledge of the rhizosphere of grapevines and also show distinctions in these bacterial communities due to agricultural practices.

The description of microbiomes as intrinsic fractions of any given ecosystem is an important issue, for instance, by linking their compositions and functions with other biotic and abiotic components of natural systems and hosts. Here we describe the archaeal and bacterial communities from soils of the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil. Based on the comparison of three areas located along an altitudinal gradient—namely, Santa Virginia, Picinguaba and Restinga—we detected the most abundant groups of Bacteria (Acidobacteria and Proteobacteria) and Archaea (Thaumarchaeota, Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeota). The particular composition of such communities in each of these areas was first evidenced by PCR-DGGE patterns [determined for Bacteria, Archaea and ammonia-oxidizing organisms—ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB)]. Moreover, sequence-based analysis provided a better resolution of communities, which indicated distinct frequencies of archaeal phyla and bacterial OTUs across areas. We found, as indicated by the Mantel test and multivariate analyses, a potential effect of the flora composition that outpaces the effect of soil characteristics (either physical and chemical) influencing the assembly of these microbial communities in soils. Our results indicate a collective role of the ecosystem underlying observed differences in microbial communities in these soils. Particularly, we posit that rainforest preservation also needs to take into account the maintenance of the soil biodiversity, as this is prompted to influence major processes that affect ecosystem functioning.