AUTHOR=Wang Yanhong , Xu Jiao , Yuan Qingsong , Guo Lanping , Xiao Chenghong , Yang Changgui , Li Liangyuan , Jiang Weike , Zhou Tao 

TITLE=Effect of symbiotic fungi-Armillaria gallica on the yield of Gastrodia elata Bl. and insight into the response of soil microbial community

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=14

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1233555

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2023.1233555

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p><italic>Armillaria</italic> members play important roles in the nutrient supply and growth modulation of <italic>Gastrodia elata</italic> Bl., and they will undergo severe competition with native soil organisms before colonization and become symbiotic with <italic>G. elata</italic>. Unraveling the response of soil microbial organisms to symbiotic fungi will open up new avenues to illustrate the biological mechanisms driving <italic>G. elata</italic>’s benefit from <italic>Armillaria</italic>. For this purpose, <italic>Armillaria</italic> strains from four main <italic>G. elata</italic> production areas in China were collected, identified, and co-planted with <italic>G. elata</italic> in Guizhou Province. The result of the phylogenetic tree indicated that the four <italic>Armillaria</italic> strains shared the shortest clade with <italic>Armillaria gallica.</italic> The yields of <italic>G. elata</italic> were compared to uncover the potential role of these <italic>A. gallica</italic> strains. Soil microbial DNA was extracted and sequenced using Illumina sequencing of 16S and ITS rRNA gene amplicons to decipher the changes of soil bacterial and fungal communities arising from <italic>A. gallica</italic> strains. The yield of <italic>G. elata</italic> symbiosis with the YN strain (<italic>A. gallica</italic> collected from Yunnan) was four times higher than that of the GZ strain (<italic>A. gallica</italic> collected from Guizhou) and nearly two times higher than that of the AH and SX strains (<italic>A. gallica</italic> collected from Shanxi and Anhui). We found that the GZ strain induced changes in the bacterial community, while the YN strain mainly caused changes in the fungal community. Similar patterns were identified in non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis, in which the GZ strain greatly separated from others in bacterial structure, while the YN strain caused significant separation from other strains in fungal structure. This current study revealed the assembly and response of the soil microbial community to <italic>A. gallica</italic> strains and suggested that exotic strains of <italic>A. gallica</italic> might be helpful in improving the yield of <italic>G. elata</italic> by inducing changes in the soil fungal community.</p>