Comparative Analysis of White Cabbage Stress Response and Soil Microbiome Resilience Under Drought Conditions

Drought is an alarming and hazardous abiotic stress omnipresent due to the outcome of climate change. It challenges agriculture by reducing yields, degrading soil quality, affecting plant growth and crop production. The soil microbial community may moderate the negative drought impact and research on soil bacterial community adaptation to drought conditions and their interaction with plants is becoming crucial for sustainable agriculture. Herein, white cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) was subjected for short-term drought exposure (10 days). After the treatment we analyzed plant stress response by measuring plant morphology, yield, photosynthetic parameters, pigments, stress markers and mineral and elements content. Changes in soil microbiome were studied via 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing analysis as well as by measurements of microbial enzyme activities in soil. It was found that plants subjected to drought stress showed a reduction in growth and photosynthetic parameters and increase in stress markers in compared to control, what confirm their activation of the stress mechanism's. Compared to the plant response, the soil microbiome community showed better resilience to drought stress and the ability to maintain stable soil microbial community diversity. Changes were observed in the decrease in the abundance of Gemmatimonadota with additional increase in arylsulfatase activity in soils under drought stress. Our results highlight the complexity of interactions between soil, microorganisms and drought conditions highlighting the fact that plants are more sensitive to drought than microbiome. These results could serve as a foundation for the screening and studying the role of drought-tolerant bacteria in the future.