Microorganisms associated with beech (Fagus sylvatica) dieback Raw sequence reads

Drought events weaken trees and make them vulnerable to attacks by diverse plant pathogens. Here we aimed to identify microorganisms potentially associated with European beech dieback after an extreme drought period (2018) in a forest of Thuringia, Germany. We used Illumina sequencing to target bacterial and archaeal 16S and Fungal ITS genes. We show that the beech dieback has been associated with both bacterial and fungal plant pathogens. Almost each tree died from a different combination of pathogens. Cytospora spp. and Neonectria coccinea were among the most frequently detected fungal pathogens, whereas Erwinia spp. and Pseudomonas spp. were the dominant plant pathogenic bacteria. Our work provides evidence that challenge the widespread paradigm that beech dieback after drought event is mainly driven by fungal pathogens and insects. We demonstrate that NGS opens avenues for fast identification of plant pathogenic microbes, which can facilitate the development of effective new treatments for disease management in forest ecosystems.