Diversity of microbiota associated with symptomatic and non-symptomatic bacterial wilt-diseased banana plants determined using 16S rRNA metagenome sequencing

Abstract

Banana is one of the most important fruits cultivated in Malaysia, and it provides many health benefits. However, bacterial wilt disease, which attacks bananas, inflicts major losses on the banana industry in Malaysia. To understand the complex interactions of the microbiota of bacterial wilt-diseased banana plants, we first determined the bacterial communities residing in the pseudostems of infected (symptomatic) and diseased-free (non-symptomatic) banana plants. We characterized the associated microorganisms using the targeted 16S rRNA metagenomics sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Taxonomic classifications revealed 17 and nine known bacterial phyla in the tissues of non-symptomatic and symptomatic plants, respectively. Cyanobacteria and Proteobacteria (accounted for more than 99% of the 16S rRNA gene fragments) were the two most abundant phyla in both plants. The five major genera found in both plant samples were Ralstonia, Sphingomonas, Methylobacterium, Flavobacterium, and Pseudomonas. Ralstonia was more abundant in symptomatic plant (59% out of the entire genera) as compared to those in the non-symptomatic plant (only 36%). Our data revealed that 102 bacterial genera were only assigned to the non-symptomatic plant. Overall, this study indicated that more diverse and abundant microbiota were associated with the non-symptomatic bacterial wilt-diseased banana plant as compared to the symptomatic plant. The higher diversity of endophytic microbiota in the non-symptomatic banana plant could be an indication of pathogen suppression which delayed or prevented the disease expression. This comparative study of the microbiota in the two plant conditions might provide caveats for potential biological control strategies.

Biological Control Agents Against Fusarium Wilt of Banana

“…Yet, microbiomics is waiting to be used in a more frequent way in the research field of banana, FWB, and biocontrol. Recent studies ( 16S rRNA and ITS amplicon sequencing profiling) have been focused on endophytic bacterial communities present in different parts and micro-environments of banana plants (Köberl et al, 2015, 2017; Zhai et al, 2016; Suhaimi et al, 2017), as well as in the microbiota of banana rhizosphere (Fu et al, 2016a) and soil (Xue et al, 2015; Rames et al, 2018).…”

“…Similarly, analyzing the banana/ R. solanacearum pathosystem (bacterial wilt of banana or Moko), five major microbial genera were found in both symptomatic and non-symptomatic plant samples: Sphingomonas, Methylobacterium, Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas , and Ralstonia , the latter being more abundant in symptomatic (59% out of the entire genera) than in non-symptomatic plants (only 36%). In addition, several genera were only assigned to non-symptomatic plants (Suhaimi et al, 2017). Another experiment showed that the soil cultivated with tobacco and infested by R. solanacearum had lower microbial diversity than the soil free from the pathogen, which harbored more abundant beneficial microbes such as Bacillus, Agromyces, Micromonospora, Pseudonocardia, Acremonium, Lysobacter, Mesorhizobium, Microvirga, Bradyrhizobium, Acremonium , and Chaetomium .…”

Metagenomic Insights of the Root Colonizing Microbiome Associated with Symptomatic and Non-Symptomatic Bananas in Fusarium Wilt Infected Fields

“…The eight samples (S1H, S2I, S3H, S4I, S5H, S6I, S7H, and S8I) were analyzed together with a QIIME suite of tools for a microbial analysis. A metagenomic analysis of the microbial community involves problems of plant DNA intrusion which adversely affect the analysis [20,21]. In the present study, we used a well-defined protocol to eliminate the intervention of banana host DNA that inhabits Fusarium symptomatic roots.…”

Impact of plant genotype and plant habitat in shaping bacterial pathobiome: a comparative study in olive tree

“…Thus, the olive cultivar seems to influence the establishment of pathobiome communities in olive knots. Accordingly, previous studies have suggested that differences on microbial abundance and diversity between asymptomatic and symptomatic tissues were possibly related to the susceptibility of the plant host to a certain disease 16,[18][19][20][21] . We hypothesized that the detected greater differences in the bacterial composition of OK-susceptible cv.…”