Data & Agriculture. What's going on ?

National audienc

Plant mediates soil water content effects on soil microbiota independently of its water uptake

International audienceThe on-going climate change impacts soil water distribution and availability, ranging from highly limited during droughts to excessive during rainfalls. While effects of water availability were documented for soil microbiota and plant growth, it remains unclear if the soil microbiota is directly impacted by soil water content (SWC) or via the plant presence and its own response to water fluctuations. Uncoupling these effects is challenging, since the plant alters SWC via its water-uptake and transpiration. We aimed to identify a potential effect of the plant on the soil microbiota, independent of its water uptake. We studied soil microbiota in two contrasting soils exposed to three water levels, either under the presence or absence of Brassica juncea (drought-sensitive, water-logging-tolerant) or Brachypodium distachyon (drought-tolerant, water-logging-sensitive). Using an automatic high-throughput watering system, we accurately maintained SWC levels to compensate plant water uptake and evapotranspiration, thus enabling the detection of plant effects independent of its water uptake. Plant traits were measured and the bacterial and fungal communities with or without plants were analysed. We highlighted effects of the plant on the microbiota under varying SWC, independently of plant water uptake. These effects were likely instigated by the physiological state of the plant due to SWC, and were dependant on the plant species and the soil considered. While bacterial communities were more sensitive to SWC than fungal communities, we found that the fungal community in the clayey soil was directly affected by SWC, and could opportunistically interact with a drought sensitive plant like Brassica juncea

High throughput root phenotyping using the “Rhizo” suite

International audienceWhile automated high throughput plant shoot phenotyping (e.g. measurement of leaf, fruits) is progressing quite rapidly in a range of platforms, morphometric characterization of plant roots (root architectural traits) is still lagging behind, due to both the high plasticity of roots and obvious technical difficulties to access them in situ. This is especially relevant for field experiments but also in controlled conditions. In order to get automated, non-destructive and fast phenotyping of roots, a range of tools and methods have been conceived within the Phenotyping Platform for Plant and Microorganisms Interactions (4PMI) in the context of the Phenome Project (French Plant Phenotyping Network, https://www.phenome-fppn.fr/), and accessible in transnational access through the EPPN2020 project (http://www.2020-horizon.com/EPPN-European-Plant-Phenotyping-Network(EPPN)-s211.html). Specialized containers (RhizoTubes) and imaging cabins (RhizoCabs) have been developed and already evaluated for a range of species in different environmental conditions (Jeudy et al., 2016). This will be briefly summarized together with recent results conducted on large number of maize, wheat, and pea genotypes subjected to contrasted environmental conditions. How to access through EPPN2020 to these tools will be presented. Alltogether, besides the bottleneck represented by image analysis, this will demonstrate the power of high throughput root phenotyping devices and methods to identify plant more tolerant to abiotic stress, including conditions of fluctuating conditions of soil resources availability

Assessing plant and microorganisms interactions using high throughput phenotyping

International audienc

High-throughput phenotyping of key legumes (and others) root traits

International audienc