Abstract

Crop breeding has traditionally ignored the plant-associated microbial communities. Consideration of the interactions between plant genotype and associated microbiota is of value since different genotypes of the same crop often harbor distinct microbial communities which can influence the plant phenotype. However, recent studies have reported contrasting results, which led us to hypothesize that the effect of genotype is constrained by time (growth stage, year) and space (plant compartment). To test this hypothesis, we sampled bulk soil, rhizosphere soil and roots of 10 wheat genotypes, twice per year, for 4 years. DNA was extracted and regions of the bacterial 16S rRNA and CPN60 genes and the fungal ITS region were amplified and sequenced. The effect of genotype was highly contingent on the time of sampling and on the plant compartment sampled. Only for a few sampling dates, were the microbial communities significantly different across genotypes. The effect of genotype was most often significant for root microbial communities. The three marker genes used provided a highly coherent picture of the effect of genotype. Taken together, our results confirm that microbial communities in the plant environment strongly vary temporally and spatially and that this can mask the effect of genotype.