The impact of mycorrhizal symbiosis on tomato fruit quality

The project investigates the potential impact of mycorrhizal fungi, which have been acknowledged as a new class of bio-fertilizers, on the quality of vegetables. To verify such a hypothesis, we selected tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) as a model plant to examine whether the beneficial effects of mycorrhizal fungi on plant development may be extended to some qualitative fruit features. As a second step, five genes related to carotenoid biosynthesis and volatile compounds were selected. Their expression was investigated through a real-time RT-PCR comparison of mycorrhized and non-mycorrhized plants

Plant genotype and seasonality drive fine changes in olive root microbiota

Due to global warming, the cultivation range of many crops is extending at higher altitudes and latitudes exposing plants to new climatic and environmental conditions, as early spring frosts. To face these issues in a sustainable agriculture context, new innovative technologies, as the use of biostimulants and the manipulation of plant microbiota, are emerging. Here, we focused on anarea of Northern Italy in which olive tree cultivation, a traditionally and economically-relevant item of Mediterranean agriculture, is rapidly extending to inland cold-temperate areas. We conducted an assessment of the prokariotic and fungal microbiota present in the root endosphere of a cold-hardy and a cold-susceptible Italian olive cultivar (Leccino and Frantoio, respectively) along spring and winter seasons. Microbiota assembly and diversity analysis revealed that the root microbiotas of more than 20 years-old plants were highly stable with few variations occurring across seasons and genotypes. Notably, we detected fine seasonal-dependent community adjustments in the cold-susceptible genotype, which involved beneficial microbes and pathogens. Moreover, different patterns of abundance were found for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and their endobacteria revealing the presence of intimate tripartite interactions. Overall, the results suggest that a healthy and highly stable root microbiota could provide a useful tool to help olive trees to face new environmental issues as those related to climate change

Tomato RNA-seq Data Mining Reveals the Taxonomic and Functional Diversity of Root-Associated Microbiota

Next-generation approaches have enabled researchers to deeply study the plant microbiota and to reveal how microbiota associated with plant roots has key effects on plant nutrition, disease resistance, and plant development. Although early “omics” experiments focused mainly on the species composition of microbial communities, new “meta-omics” approaches such as meta-transcriptomics provide hints about the functions of the microbes when interacting with their plant host. Here, we used an RNA-seq dataset previously generated for tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) plants growing on different native soils to test the hypothesis that host-targeted transcriptomics can detect the taxonomic and functional diversity of root microbiota. Even though the sequencing throughput for the microbial populations was limited, we were able to reconstruct the microbial communities and obtain an overview of their functional diversity. Comparisons of the host transcriptome and the meta-transcriptome suggested that the composition and the metabolic activities of the microbiota shape plant responses at the molecular level. Despite the limitations, mining available next-generation sequencing datasets can provide unexpected results and potential benefits for microbiota research