Bermudagrass microbiomes

Turfgrass provides numerous ecosystem services in urban environments, ecological side effects from intensive management raised concerns on the sustainability of turfgrass ecosystems. One potentially promising approach is to take advantage of naturally evolved turfgrass-associated microbes and harness beneficial services provided by microbiomes. Here, we analyzed microbial communities inhabiting the leaf and root endospheres as well as soil in two bermudagrass cultivars, Latitude 36 and TifTuf that exhibit distinct susceptibility to nematode infections, with the goal of identifying potential differences in microbiomes that might explain the different nematode susceptibility. We used 16S rRNA gene V4 and ITS2 amplicon sequencing to characterize microbiomes.