Influence of plant genotype and soil on the wheat rhizosphere microbiome: identification of a core microbiome across eight African and European soils. Wheat Microbiome Project

Here, we characterized the rhizosphere microbiome of wheat by considering both prokaryotic (archaea and bacteria) and eukaryotic (fungi and protists) communities in soils from four different countries (Cameroon, France, Italy, Senegal). The goals of this study were to determine the influence of wheat genotype, agricultural practices (conventional vs organic) and soil type on the rhizosphere microbiome. An additional goal was to determine if a rhizosphere core microbiome existed across these different countries.In a growth chamber experiment, we first characterized the rhizosphere microbiome (here soil tightly bound to roots) of eight different genotypes of winter bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grown in one soil (FR2) to assess specifically the genotype effect. Second, we characterized the rhizosphere microbiome of three wheat genotypes grown in eight contrasted soils (Table 1) collected from different countries: in Central Africa, Cameroon (CAM1 and CAM2 soils) and West Africa, Senegal (SEN1 and SEN2 soils) and in Europe, France (FR1 and FR2 soils) and Italy (IT1 and IT2 soils). The total microbiome diversity was characterized using amplicon sequencing of the marker genes 16S rRNA (prokaryotic diversity: archaea and bacteria) and 18S rRNA (eukaryotic diversity: fungi and protists).