Differential impact of Bt-transgenic rice plantings on bacterial community in three niches over consecutive years

Abstract

Transgenic-Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops express insecticidal proteins, which can accumulate in plants and soil where they may influence microbial populations. The impact of Bt crops on bacterial communities has only been assessed under short-term, and results have been contradictory. Here, we analyzed the bacterial communities in three niches, rhizosphere soil (RS), root endosphere (RE) and leaf endosphere (LE), of three Bt rice and their non-Bt parental lines for three consecutive years by high-throughput sequencing. In principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) and PERMANOVA (Adonis) analysis, operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were clustered primarily by niche type and differed significantly in the RE and LE but not in the RS between each of three Bt lines compared with the non-Bt rice line, and not in each respective niche among the three Bt rice lines. The bacterial communities in the RS of different rice lines over the 3 years were clustered mainly by year rather than by lines. The differential bacterial taxa among the lines did not overlap between years, presumably because Cry proteins are rapidly degraded in the soil. A network analysis of RS bacterial communities showed that the network complexity and density for the three Bt rice lines did not decrease compared with those for the non-Bt line. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that bacterial communities differed significantly in RE and LE between Bt and non-Bt rice lines, but the differences were mild and transient, and had no adverse impact on RS over the 3 years. This study provides favorable evidence in support of the commercialization of Bt rice.

Keywords

• Bt rice
• Safety assessment
• Endophytes
• Rhizosphere soil
• Bacteriome
• High-throughput sequencing