Abstract
Soil bacteria-fungi interactions are essential in the biogeochemical cycles of several nutrients, making these microbes major players in agroecosystems. While the impact of the farming system on microbial community composition has been extensively reported in the literature, whether sustainable farming approaches can promote associations between bacteria and fungi is still unclear. To study this, we employed 16S, ITS, and 18S DNA sequencing to uncover how microbial interactions were affected by conventional and organic farming systems on maize crops. The Bray–Curtis index revealed that bacterial, fungal, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi communities were significantly different between the two farming systems. Several taxa known to thrive in healthy soils, such as Nitrosophaerales, Orbiliales, and Glomus were more abundant in the organic farming system. Constrained ordination revealed that the organic farming system microbial community was significantly correlated with the β-glucosidase activity, whereas the conventional farming system microbial community significantly correlated with soil pH. Both conventional and organic co-occurrence interkingdom networks exhibited a parallel node count, however, the former had a higher number of edges, thus being denser than the latter. Despite the similar amount of fungal nodes in the co-occurrence networks, the organic farming system co-occurrence network exhibited more than 3-fold the proportion of fungal taxa as keystone nodes than the conventional co-occurrence network. The genera Bionectria, Cercophora, Geastrum, Penicillium, Preussia, Metarhizium, Myceliophthora, and Rhizophlyctis were among the fungal keystone nodes of the organic farming system network. Altogether, our results uncover that beyond differences in microbial community composition between the two farming systems, fungal keystone nodes are far more relevant in the organic farming system, thus suggesting that bacteria-fungi interactions are more frequent in organic farming systems, promoting a more functional microbial community.
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Data availability
Sequence data that support the findings of this study have been deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information—NCBI, and can be accessed by the Bioproject codes: PRJNA686771, PRJNA953004, and PRJNA953026.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Ademir Durrer, Dr. Sérgio Kenji Homma and Mr. Rodrigo Henriques Longaresi for their aid during the samples acquisition.
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This research was funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (#2019/13436-8, #2017/24785-8, and #2016/18944-3) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brazil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001.
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F.P.M. Wrote the main manuscript text and performed the formal analyses. A.M.M.S. and V.L.V.P. performed the experimental setting, sample acquisition, and figures edition. H.P.F. performed the experimental setting and sample acquisition. E.J.B.N. obtained funding, performed the supervision, and project administration. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Matteoli, F.P., Silva, A.M.M., de Araújo, V.L.V.P. et al. Organic farming promotes the abundance of fungi keystone taxa in bacteria-fungi interkingdom networks. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 40, 119 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-024-03926-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-024-03926-y