“Breeding on Mountains” Resulted in the Reorganization of Endophytic Fungi in Asexually Propagated Plants (Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort.)

Abstract

“Breeding on mountains, cultivation in dam areas” is a unique propagation method for the vegetatively propagated plant Ligusticum chuanxiong, including two transplants between the mountain and the dam area. It is well known that the environment can influence the endophytic community structure of plants. However, the change of host endophytic flora caused by transplanting in different places and its influence on asexual reproduction are still poorly understood. We carried out three cycles of cultivation experiments on L. chuanxiong and collected stem nodes (LZ), immature rhizomes (PX), medicinal rhizomes (CX), and rhizosphere. High-throughput sequencing was performed to analyze the endophytic fungi in all samples. We observed that the diversity and richness of endophytic fungi in L. chuanxiong increased as a result of transplanting cultivation from dam areas to mountains. Local transplantation caused minor changes in the endophytic fungus structure of L. chuanxiong, while remote transplantation caused significant changes. Compared with LZ after breeding in the dam area, the LZ after breeding on mountains has more abundant Gibberella, Phoma, Pericona, Paraphoma, and Neocosmospora. The regular pattern of the relative abundance of endophytic fungi is consistent with that of the fungus in the soil, while there are also some cases that the relative abundance of endophytic fungi is the opposite of that of soil fungi. In addition, there is a significant correlation among certain kinds of endophytic fungi whether in the soil or the plants. We have isolated more gibberellin-producing and auxin-producing fungi in the LZ cultivated in the mountains than that in the LZ cultivated in the dam area. The results of pot experiments showed that the three fungi isolated from LZ cultivated in mountainous areas can promote the development of shoots, stem nodes, and internodes of LZ, and increase the activity of plant peroxidase, catalase, phenylalanine ammonia lyase, and other enzymes. We can conclude that transplantation leads to the recombination of the host endophytic fungus, the more significant the difference in the environment is, the greater the reorganization caused by transplanting. Reorganization is determined by the soil environment, hosts, and the interaction of microorganisms. Remote transplantation is a crucial opportunity to reshuffle the micro-ecological structure of the asexual reproduction of plants, and regulate the growth, development, and resistance of plants, and prevent germplasm degradation caused by asexual reproduction.

Recombination of endophytic bacteria in asexual plant Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort. caused by transplanting

“…These results showed that, after transplanting, LZ endophytic bacteria recombined. The degree of recombination of endophytic bacteria community caused by local transplanting was greater than that caused by mountain transplanting, which was just opposite to the recombination of fungal community of L. chuanxiong in the previous study ( Kang et al, 2021 ). This might be related to the species diversity of the bacterial community in the soil: the species diversity in the mountain soil was lower than that in the dam soil.…”

“…In our previous research, we found that the process of mountain breeding led to the recombination of endophytic fungi in LZ, with more disease resistant fungi and growth promoting fungi in the LZ, while the pathogenic fungi were reduced in it. These recombinated fungi were proveded could promote the growth and development of host and resist pathogenic bacteria ( Kang et al, 2021 ). This study focused on the endophytic bacterial community structure in the process of propagation and transplantation of L. chuanxiong , hoping to clarify the microecological reorganization mechanism caused by the transplantation process and its contribution to the rejuvenation of asexual plant germplasm.…”

Correlations Between the Metabolome and the Endophytic Fungal Metagenome Suggests Importance of Various Metabolite Classes in Community Assembly in Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana, Brassicaceae) Roots

“…At genus resolution, plant samples showed a high abundance of genera that have been already described as endophytes: Exophiala (Yu et al, 2021), Monosporascus (Guo and Zou, 2020), Paraphoma (Kang et al, 2021), Plectospherella (Feng et al, 2021;Wei et al, 2021), Podospora (Penner and Sapir, 2021). Some of these genera were even identified in Brassicaceae plant endospheres, including Exophiala (Maciá-Vicente et al, 2016), Plectosphaerella (Plaszkó et al, 2020;Ważny et al, 2021), Setophoma (Szűcs et al, 2018;Poveda et al, 2020), or as a common pathogen: Thanatephorus (teleomorph of Rhizoctonia) (Dean et al, 2012).…”

Community Series in Plants and Microbial Communities: Diversity, Pathogens and Biological Control, Volume II

“…However, environmental factors have been reported to shape the endophytic fungal community structure, resulting in differences in plant characteristics (Coleman-Derr et al, 2016;. Transplantation of plants from dam areas to mountains can lead to the recombination of endophytic fungi and alter the diversity and richness of endophytic fungi in Ligusticum chuanxiong (Kang et al, 2021). Interestingly, a study indicated that five secondary metabolites, namely aloe-emodin, rhein, emodin, chrysophanol, and physcion, are positively correlated with the diversity and abundance of endophytic fungi of Rheum palmatum from eight different production areas (Chen D. et al, 2021).…”