Rhizosphere Microbiomes of <i>Amaranthus</i> spp. Grown in Soils with Anthropogenic Polyelemental Anomalies

Abstract

Study of rhizospheric microbial communities of plants growing under different environmental conditions is important for understanding the habitat-dependent formation of rhizosphere microbiomes. The rhizosphere bacterial communities of four amaranth cultivars were investigated in a laboratory pot experiment. Amaranthus tricolor cv. Valentina, A. cruentus cv. Dyuimovochka, and A. caudatus cvs. Bulava and Zelenaya Sosulka were grown for six months in three soils with different anthropogenic polyelemental anomalies and in a background control soil. After the plant cultivation, the rhizosphere soils were sampled and subjected to metagenomic analysis for the 16S rRNA gene. The results showed that the taxonomic structure of the amaranth rhizosphere microbiomes was represented by the dominant bacterial phyla Actinobacteriota and Proteobacteria. A feature of the taxonomic profile of the rhizobiomes of A. tricolor cv. Valentina and A. cruentus cv. Dyuimovochka was a large abundance of sequences related to Cyanobacteria. The formation of the amaranth rhizosphere microbiomes was largely unaffected by soils, but cultivar differences in the formation of the amaranth rhizosphere microbial structure were revealed. Bacterial taxa were identified that are possibly selected by amaranths and that may be important for plant adaptation to various habitat conditions. The targeted enrichment of the amaranth rhizosphere with members of these taxa could be useful for improving the efficacy of amaranth use for agricultural and remediation purposes.

Keywords

• <i>Amaranthus</i> spp.
• rhizosphere microbial communities
• rhizosphere bacterial diversity
• technogenically contaminated soils
• phytoremediation