Rhizosphere microbiota interfers with plant-plant interactions

Diversity, structure and productivity of above-ground compartment of terrestrial ecosystems have been generally considered as the main drivers of the relationships between diversity and ecosystem functioning. More recently it has been suggested that plant population dynamics may be linked with the development of the below-ground community. The biologically active soil zone where root-root and root-microbe communications occur is named "Rhizosphere" where root exudates play active roles in regulating rhizosphere interactions. Root exudation can regulate the soil microbial community, withstand herbivory, facilitate beneficial symbioses, modify the chemical and physical soil properties and inhibit the growth of competing plant species. In this review, we explore the current knowledge assessing the importance of root exudates in plant interactions, in communications between parasitic plants and their hosts and how some soil microbial components could regulate plant species coexistence and change relationships between plants. This review will be focussed on several well documented biological processes regulating plant-plant communications such as exotic plant species invasions, negative root-root communication (allelopathy) and parasitic plant / host plant interactions and how some soil microbial components can interfere with signal traffic between roots. The reported data show that the overall effect of one plant to another results from multiple interacting mechanisms where soil microbiota can be considered as a key component

QualiRedFruits: new agricultural practices for quality production for red fruits enriched in healthy compounds

One of the objective of the QualiRedFruits project was to analyse the influence of biotisation with Glomus intraradices isolate LPA8 and Sinorhizobium meliloti, production site (Switzerland France, Slovenia, Bulgaria) and cultivar ('Tulameen', 'Polka') on antioxidant molecules (AOM) content and antioxidant activities in raspberry fruits. 'Polka' was significantly richer in anthocyanins and showed much higher ORAC values than 'Tulameen', whereas for total phenolic content and FRAP values no differences were observed between both cultivars. Growing location significantly influenced AOM content and antioxidant capacities of raspberry fruits for both cultivars with, in general, fruits from soil production systems showing the higher contents of health related compounds than production systems on substrate. However, the treatments with and without biotisation showed no clear differences on AOM production and antioxidant activities in fruits at each location due to high natural colonisation by indigenous mycorrhizal fungi. In conclusion, the most important factors influencing AOM content and antioxidant activities in raspberry fruits in this experiment were the plant genotype (cultivar) and to a lesser extent the production site