Water Stress and Disruption of Mycorrhizae Induce Parallel Shifts in Phyllosphere Microbiome Composition

Abstract

Water and nutrient limitation are key stressors that affect plant health and ecosystem function. These environmental factors impact both soil- and root-associated microbial communities, and systemically alter plant physiology, but it is less clear how they affect aboveground plant-microbe interactions. Through experimental manipulations in the field and growth chamber, we examine the interacting effects of irrigation, soil fertility, and root mycorrhizal associations on bacterial and fungal communities of the tomato phyllosphere (Solanum lycopersicum). Both water stress and mycorrhizal disruption reduced bacterial richness within plants, homogenized bacterial community diversity among plants, and reduced the relative abundance of dominant fungal taxa. We observed striking parallelism in the individual microbial taxa affected by irrigation and mycorrhizal associations. Given the increasingly understood role of the phyllosphere in shaping plant health and pathogen susceptibility, these results offer an additional mechanism by which belowground conditions shape plant fitness.

Leaf phyllosphere microbiome and crop productivity under climate warming

“…The microbiome of the leaf phyllosphere involves the communities of bacteria, fungi, and protists, which can be investigated efficiently by molecular ecologies, such as high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic analysis (Koskella, 2020;Rastogi et al, 2013;Su et al, 2022). Additionally, the linkage between leaf phyllosphere microbiome and food productivity in response to climate warming was influenced by fertilizer management, drought stress, crop variety, and study region (Bechtold et al, 2021;Debray et al, 2022). Thus, we should collect data on leaf phyllosphere microbiome under climate warming, different fertilization management, crop variety, drought stress, and other factors to develop effective productivity strategies for global warming in the future.…”

“…Perreault and Laforest-Lapointe (2022) reported that plant-microbe interactions in the phyllosphere drive plant host adaptation to global warming. Therefore, the investigation of the phyllosphere microbiome will be essential for understanding how global warming shifts plant communities given that the phyllosphere microbiome might protect plant hosts from the threat of future climate change (Debray et al, 2022;Koskella, 2020). Until recently, empirical evidence for the impacts of climate warming on leaf phyllosphere-associated microbiomes is lacking.…”