DROUGHT STRESS SHAPES THE ROOT-ASSOCIATED BACTERIAL AND FUNGAL COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN SOYBEAN GENOTYPES

Drought stress is one of the key abiotic stresses restraining the crop growth and production worldwide. Drought stress can also influence the structure and function of rhizosphere microbiome. The main objective of current investigation was to explore the effects of drought stress on shaping bacterial and fungal community structure in the wild and cultivated-type soybean genotypes. The results revealed that under drought, higher accumulation of osmolytes (sugar and proline) contents and NCED1 transcript were found in wild soybean (Glycine sofa) as compared to the cultivated soybean (Glycine max), which elucidate that wild soybean genotype was more drought tolerant. Moreover, dehydration stress significantly suppressed the fungal diversity of the two host plants,though the diversity of the bacterial community in G sofa was significantly increased. Sulfitobacter sp. was only found in wild soybean. There was an increase in the proportion of Bradyrhizobium sp. under drought in two soybean genotypes whereas Sphingomonas sp. significantly enhanced in wild genotype. Our results indicated that G sofa a wild soybean genotype was highly drought tolerant than G max, and established more microbial association by increasing the number of bacterial community and diversity than G max. Therefore, this study provides a new evidence for improving soybean drought tolerant genotypes by studying the mechanism of plant-microbe interaction.