AUTHOR=Malacrinò Antonino , Abdelfattah Ahmed , Belgacem Imen , Schena Leonardo 

TITLE=Plant genotype influence the structure of cereal seed fungal microbiome

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.1075399

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2022.1075399

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p>Plant genotype is a crucial factor for the assembly of the plant-associated microbial communities. However, we still know little about the variation of diversity and structure of plant microbiomes across host species and genotypes. Here, we used six species of cereals (<italic>Avena sativa</italic>, <italic>Hordeum vulgare</italic>, <italic>Secale cereale</italic>, <italic>Triticum aestivum</italic>, <italic>Triticum polonicum</italic>, and <italic>Triticum turgidum</italic>) to test whether the plant fungal microbiome varies across species, and whether plant species use different mechanisms for microbiome assembly focusing on the plant ears. Using ITS2 amplicon metagenomics, we found that host species influences the diversity and structure of the seed-associated fungal communities. Then, we tested whether plant genotype influences the structure of seed fungal communities across different cultivars of <italic>T. aestivum</italic> (Aristato, Bologna, Rosia, and Vernia) and <italic>T. turgidum</italic> (Capeiti, Cappelli, Mazzancoio, Trinakria, and Timilia). We found that cultivar influences the seed fungal microbiome in both species. We found that in <italic>T. aestivum</italic> the seed fungal microbiota is more influenced by stochastic processes, while in <italic>T. turgidum</italic> selection plays a major role. Collectively, our results contribute to fill the knowledge gap on the wheat seed microbiome assembly and, together with other studies, might contribute to understand how we can manipulate this process to improve agriculture sustainability.</p>