Insights into the microbiome assembly during different growth stages and storage of strawberry plants

  • Expedito Olimi (Speaker)

Activity: Talk or presentationPoster presentationScience to science

Description

Plants are holobionts, and their microbiota plays critical roles in growth, health, and abiotic stress resilience. Plant-specific microbiome assembly has previously been demonstrated for different plant species; however, how microbial communities are assembled along the fruit development and how this translates onto fruit quality and postharvest storage is less well known. To investigate this in strawberry plants, we applied high-throughput sequencing of the bacterial and fungal community, real-time qPCR, and FISH confocal laser scanning microscopy. Strawberry plants carried a highly diverse microbiota, where the bacterial families Sphingomonadaceae (25%) Pseudomonadaceae (17%) and Burkholderiaceae (11%); and the fungal family Mycosphaeraceae (45%) were highly abundant. Interestingly, microbial abundance in the fruit was high (108 to 109 microbial marker gene copy numbers), with up to 50 fungal and 200 bacterial species colonizing the fruits. The fruit microbiome was majorly assembled from the microbiota of leaves, flowers, and immature fruits. We also observed that bacterial diversity and abundance increased as the fruit matured. On the other hand, we observed that microbial diversity was reduced due to disease and postharvest storage, but the total abundance increased, which was also accompanied by an increase in Enterobacteriaceae. Our findings revealed that fruit microbial communities are assembled during fruit development and maturing. We also showed that plant and field management as well as storage could have severe influence on fruit-associated microbial communities. Therefore, microbiome management and interventions during fruit development could result in more storable and healthier fruits.
Period11 Jul 202214 Jul 2022
Event titlemiCROPe 2022: International Symposium Microbe-Assisted Crop Production - Opportunities, Challenges, Needs
Event typeConference
LocationWien, AustriaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Strawberry microbiome
  • Amplicon sequencing
  • Post-harvest microbiome
  • Microbiome assembly
  • Microbiome management