Effects of a fungal invasion on soil bacteria
Creators: name: Pinzari, Flavia
name: Jungblut, Anne D.
name: Clark, M.D.
name: Misra, R.
name: Xu, X.-M.
name: Chooneea, D.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: soil, Trichoderma, invasion, microbial community, bioinoculants, T22

description: <strong>Presentation by F.Pinzari at The World Congress of Soil Science 2022, which took place in Glasgow from 31st July - 5th August 2022</strong> Abstract: <strong>Effects of a fungal invasion on soil bacteria </strong> Pinzari F.<sup>1,2</sup>, Clark M.D.<sup>1</sup>, Misra R.<sup> 3</sup>, Chooneea D.<sup>3</sup>, Xu X.-M.<sup>4</sup>, Jungblut A.D.<sup>1</sup> <sup>1</sup>Life Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD London, UK <sup>2</sup>Institute for Biological Systems, Council of National Research of Italy (CNR), Monterotondo (RM), Italy <sup>3</sup>Core Research Laboratories, Molecular Biology, Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom <sup>4</sup>National Institute of Agricultural Botany, East Malling Research Station (EMR), East Malling, UK Fungal bioinoculants have a vast potential in agriculture because they can help increase crop yields and quality and reduce the application of chemicals. Their effectiveness has been widely tested (Malusà et al., 2016). However, little is known about the effect of bioinoculants on microbial assemblages in non-rhizospheric soil. A sudden artificial introduction of a fungal species in soil could theoretically impact the biodiversity of local microbial communities and lead to changes in nutrient availability (van Elsas et al., 2012). We assessed the impact of a competitive fungal inoculum, the globally-used biofertiliser <em>Trichoderma afroharzianum </em>T22, on soil microcosms to understand 1) to what extent the native microbial community richness and relative abundance are influenced by a fungal strain introduced to soil; 2) whether microbial taxa are resilient to the disturbance caused by the fungus; 3) how far the bioinoculant impacts the soil microorganisms functions. We used bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing (Illumina) and a shotgun metagenomic analysis (Oxford Nanopore Sequencing) to analyse the microbial communities in bioreactors after seven weeks of incubation with and without the fungus. The presence of the fungus had a negative impact on the abundance of some groups of bacteria, such as the genus <em>Pseudomonas, </em>and it stimulated the presence of species metabolically linked to the fungus, including chitin degrading Chitinophagaceae. In conclusion, the results suggest that more than an impact on bacteria's overall biodiversity, the fungus has favoured some groups at the expense of others, even creating new food webs and trophic niches. <strong>References</strong> Malusà E, Pinzari F, Canfora L (2016) Efficacy of Biofertilizers: Challenges to Improve Crop Production. In: D.P. Singh et al. (eds.), Microbial Inoculants in Sustainable Agricultural Productivity: Microbial Inoculants in Sustainable Agricultural Productivity, pp.17-40 Springer India doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2644-4_2 van Elsas JD, Chiurazzi M, Mallon CA, Elhottova D, Kristufek V, Salles JF. (2012) Microbial diversity determines the invasion of soil by a bacterial pathogen. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 24;109(4):1159-64. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1109326109.