Streptomyces sp. strain TOR3209: a rhizosphere bacterium promoting growth of tomato by affecting the rhizosphere microbial community

Aiming at revealing the possible mechanism of its growth promoting effect on tomato, the correlations among Streptomyces sp. TOR3209 inoculation, rhizobacteriome, and tomato growth/production traits were investigated in this study. By analyses of Illumina sequencing and plate coating, differences in rhizosphere microbial communities were found in different growth stages and distinct inoculation treatments. The plant biomass/fruit yields and relative abundances of families Flavobacteriaceae, Sphingobacteriaceae, Polyangiaceae and Enterobacteriaceae in treatments T (tomato inoculated with TOR3209) and TF (tomato inoculated with TOR3209 + organic fertilizer) were higher than that in the controls (CK and CK+ organic fertilizer), respectively. The analysis of Metastats and LEfSe revealed that the genera Flavobacterium and Sorangium in seedling stage, Klebsiella in flowering stage, Collimonas in early fruit setting stage, and genera Micrococcaceae, Pontibacte and Adhaeribacter in late fruit setting stage were the most representative rhizobacteria that positively responded to TOR3209 inoculation. By cultivation method, five bacterial strains positively correlated to TOR3209 inoculation were isolated from rhizosphere and root endosphere, which were identified as tomato growth promoters affiliated to Enterobacter sp., Arthrobacter sp., Bacillus subtilis, Rhizobium sp. and Bacillus velezensis. In pot experiment, TOR3209 and B. velezensis WSW007 showed joint promotion to tomato production, while the abundance of inoculated TOR3209 was dramatically decreased in rhizosphere along the growth of tomato. Conclusively, TOR3209 might promote the tomato production via changing of microbial community in rhizosphere. These findings provide a better understanding of the interactions among PGPR in plant promotion.