Background
The symbiosis between arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and plants often stimulates plant growth, increases agricultural yield, reduces costs, thereby providing significant economic benefits. AMF can also benefit plants through affecting the rhizosphere microbial community, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Using
Rhizophagus intraradices
as a model AMF species, we assessed how AMF influences the bacterial composition and functional diversity through 16 S rRNA gene sequencing and non-targeted metabolomics analysis in the rhizosphere of aluminum-sensitive soybean that were inoculated with pathogenic fungus
Nigrospora oryzae
and phosphorus-solubilizing fungus
Talaromyces verruculosus
in an acidic soil.
Results
The inoculation of
R. intraradices
,
N. oryzae
and
T. verruculosus
didn’t have a significant influence on the levels of soil C, N, and P, or various plant characteristics such as seed weight, crude fat and protein content. However, their inoculation affected the structure, function and nutrient dynamics of the resident bacterial community. The co-inoculation of
T. verruculosus
and
R. intraradices
increased the relative abundance of
Pseudomonas psychrotolerans
, which was capable of N-fixing and was related to cry-for-help theory (plants signal for beneficial microbes when under stress), within the rhizosphere.
R. intraradices
increased the expression of metabolic pathways associated with the synthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, which was known to enhance plant resistance under adverse environmental conditions. The inoculation of
N. oryzae
stimulated the stress response inside the soil environment by enriching the polyene macrolide antifungal antibiotic-producing bacterial genus
Streptomyces
in the root endosphere and upregulating two antibacterial activity metabolic pathways associated with steroid biosynthesis pathways in the rhizosphere. Although inoculation of pathogenic fungus
N. oryzae
enriched
Bradyrhizobium
and increased soil urease activity, it had no significant effects on biomass and N content of soybean. Lastly, the host niches exhibited differences in the composition of the bacterial community, with most N-fixing bacteria accumulating in the endosphere and
Rhizobium vallis
only detected in the endosphere.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate that intricate interactions between AMF, associated core fungi, and the soybean root-associated ecological niches co-mediate the regulation of soybean growth, the dynamics of rhizosphere soil nutrients, and the composition, function, and metabolisms of the root-as...