Rhizobacterial Community Assembly Patterns Vary Between Crop Species

Currently our limited understanding of crop rhizosphere community assembly hinders attempts to manipulate it beneficially. Variation in root communities has been attributed to plant host effects, soil type, and plant condition, but it is hard to disentangle the relative importance of soil and host without experimental manipulation. To examine the effects of soil origin and host plant on root associated bacterial communities we experimentally manipulated four crop species in split-plot mesocosms and surveyed variation in bacterial diversity by Illumina amplicon sequencing. Overall, plant species had a greater impact than soil type on community composition. While plant species associated with different Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in different soils, plants tended to recruit bacteria from similar, higher order, taxonomic groups in different soils. However, the effect of soil on root-associated communities varied between crop species: Onion had a relatively invariant bacterial community while other species (maize and pea) had a more variable community structure. Dynamic communities could result from environment specific recruitment, differential bacterial colonization or reflect broader symbiont host range; while invariant community assembly implies tighter evolutionary or ecological interactions between plants and root-associated bacteria. Irrespective of mechanism, it appears both communities and community assembly rules vary between crop species.