Rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities of healthy and wilted pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) in an organic farming system

ABSTRACT: Rhizosphere microorganisms play an important role in the growth and health of plants. Around the world, diverse soil-borne pathogens attack Capsicum annuum causing significant damage and economic losses. This study determined whether the diversity and composition of microbial communities in the rhizosphere soil of C. annuum plants is significantly changed by wilt disease. We used the 16S rRNA gene for bacteria and the internal transcribed spacer region for fungi to characterize the rhizosphere microbiomes of healthy and wilted plants. The most abundant bacterial phyla were Proteobacteria and Gemmatimonadetes, while the most abundant fungal phyla were Ascomycota and Mucoromycota. The bacterial α-diversity did not show significant differences in richness and diversity, but did show a significant difference in evenness and dominance of species. Rare taxa were present in both healthy and wilted conditions with relative abundances < 1%. In the fungi, all evaluated estimators showed a significant reduction in the wilted condition. The β-diversity showed significant differences in the structure of bacterial and fungal communities, which were segregated according to plant health conditions. The same occurred when comparing the alpha and beta diversity of this study based on organic agriculture with that of other studies based on conventional agriculture. We observed a significant difference with estimators analyzed by segregating rhizosphere communities depending on the farming method used. Finally, the differential abundance analysis did not show significant results in the bacterial communities; however, in the fungal communities, Fusarium, Thanatephorus, Rhizopus, Curvularia, Cladosporium, and Alternaria were more abundant in the rhizosphere of wilted than healthy plants. Species from these genera have been previously reported as phytopathogens of several plants, including C. annuum.