Metagenomics Reveal Correlations Between Microbial Organisms in Soils and the Health ofPopulus euphratica

Abstract

Biological diversity plays an important role in the stability of ecosystems. The Mu Us Desert (MUD), located in Northern China, is an aeolian desert. Although it has been governed by a series of ecological restoration programs, the MUD still has limited biological diversity.Populus euphratica(P. euphratica), a xerophytic plant, has great potential to improve the biological diversity of the MUD. However, the survival rate ofP. euphraticain the MUD has been very low. The current study tried to explore the mechanism of the high death rate ofP. euphraticain the microbiome perspective. The correlation study between soil community composition and soil properties showed that water-filled pore space (WFPS), pH, EC, AP, NO3-, and NH(4)(+)possess higher potential to change the bacterial community (18%) than the fungal community (9%). Principal coordinate analysis indicated that the composition of both bacteria (ProteobacteriaandBacteroidetes) and fungi (Ascomycota) in the root soil can be increased byP. euphratica. By systematically comparing between the fungal diversity in the root soil aroundP. euphraticaand the pathogenic fungus extract from the pathogenic site ofP. euphratica, we found that the high death rate ofP. euphraticawas associated with specific pathogenic fungusAlternaria alternateandDidymella glomerata. In addition, the microbiome composition analysis indicated thatP. euphraticaplanting could also influence the portions of bacteria community, which also has great potential to lead to future infection. However, as the extraction and separation of bacteria from plants is challenging, the correlation between pathogenic bacteria and the high death rate ofP. euphraticawas not studied here and could be explored in future work.