Effect of Glyphosate (Blasticidal dose) on leaf microbiome of wild type and glyphosate-tolerant transgenic rice

In the scenario of repurposing common broad-spectrum herbicides as fungicide, the application of glyphosate can be a good option for controlling rice blast because of the evolutionary conservation of crucial EPSPS binding sites within plants, bacteria, and fungi. This can be supported by the fact that there are many reports in the literature citing about antibacterial activity and antifungal activity of multiple herbicides.Despite being in agricultural use since last five decades, no significant progress has been found related to the subject matter of herbicide-mediated control of diseases in rice. Additionally, the study of microbiome-level changes seems to be necessary because the symbiotic association of various microbes contributes to the functional aspect of the plant. Furthermore, there are very few reports in the literature that deciphers the effect of herbicides on microbiome composition which necessitated analyzing this parameter.In view of the above-mentioned facts, the OsmEPSPS (T173I and P177S) gene cassette was over-expressed constitutively in indica rice (Variety BPT5204/Samba Masuri). The herbicide-tolerant transgenic plants (glyphosate-resistant TIPS-mutated OsmEPSPS [T4 generation Line 5] was employed in the present study as plant material to analyze the effect of glyphosate on rice leaf microbiome (both epiphytic and endophytic).