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Microorganisms reveal what plants do not: wheat growth and rhizosphere microbial communities after Azospirillum brasilense inoculation and nitrogen fertilization under field conditions

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Abstract

Aims

Azospirillum brasilense is one of plant growth promoting bacteria used to improve plant growth and grain yield of cereal crops. The level of inoculation response is defined by complex plant-microorganism interactions, many of them still unknown. Thus, we evaluated both agronomic response and microbial ecology of wheat crop under A. brasilense inoculation and nitrogen fertilization at field conditions in order to improve inoculation efficiency.

Methods

Treatments were: control, nitrogen fertilization and inoculation with 40M and 42M strains. Functional and structural diversity of rhizosphere bacterial communities were evaluated by community-level physiological and terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism profiles. Besides, aerial biomass, grain yield and counts of microaerophilic diazotrophic rhizobacteria were determined.

Results

Plant ontogeny modified the number of culturable microaerophilic diazotrophic rhizobacteria. Although agronomic response did not show differences, plant ontogeny and the agricultural practices modified both physiology and genetic structure of rhizosphere microbial communities. Interestingly, these differences due to the treatments were observed at jointing stage but not at grain-filling stage of wheat.

Conclusions

Our results demonstrate how different management decisions can change plant- microorganism relationships. While wheat could not show differences between some agricultural treatments, under the soil surface microbial communities could show them.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by FONCYT 2008 PICT 1864 from the MINCyT, UBACyT project 20020090100255, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) in Argentina. The authors received financial support from the collaborative projects PROMAI UBA and AUGM for travel expenses of L.P.D.S., L.F. and A.F.S. We are grateful to the agronomist Patricio Perdoménico and personal of “La Aurora”, Villa Moll, Buenos Aires, Argentina. We are also grateful to editors and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. We would like to dedicate this work to the memory of Dr. Katia RS Teixeira, Brazilian researcher of the EMBRAPA, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who always will be in our hearts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CONICET - Cátedra de Microbiología Agrícola, Facultad de Agronomía, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Av. San Martín 4453, 1417, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Luciana P. Di Salvo

  2. Cátedra de Microbiología, Facultad de Química, Universidad de la República, Gral. Flores, 2124, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Lucía Ferrando & Ana Fernández-Scavino

  3. Facultad de Agronomía, Departamento de Biología Aplicada y Alimentos, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Cátedra de Microbiología Agrícola. Av. San Martín 4453, 1417, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Inés E. García de Salamone

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  1. Luciana P. Di Salvo
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  2. Lucía Ferrando
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  3. Ana Fernández-Scavino
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  4. Inés E. García de Salamone
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Di Salvo, L.P., Ferrando, L., Fernández-Scavino, A. et al. Microorganisms reveal what plants do not: wheat growth and rhizosphere microbial communities after Azospirillum brasilense inoculation and nitrogen fertilization under field conditions. Plant Soil 424, 405–417 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3548-7

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