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Temporal dynamics of the soil metabolome and microbiome in response to anaerobic soil disinfestation

Mark Mazzola: USDA-ARS


<div>Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) is a soil-borne disease management practice effective for controlling a broad spectrum of pathogens in a diversity of cropping systems. Chemical and biological modes of action of disease control have been proposed. Temporal dynamics of metabolome and microbiome changes in response to ASD using rice bran were examined. ASD treated soil underwent aerobic, fermentative, and anaerobic phases over a 15-day period. Separate weighted gene correlation analysis (WGCNA) of metabolites and microbial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) revealed that changes in both datasets could be divided into “modules” indicative of similar changes in levels. Co-abundance correlation metabolite networks consisted of production, consumption, and intermediate modules over time. Parallel to the metabolic network, microbial co-abundance networks were composed of modules of OTUs that either proliferated, declined or showed intermediate trends. Specific microbial OTU modules showed significant correlations with particular metabolic modules indicating impact of these microbial modules on production or consumption of those metabolic modules. Adjacent time points had relatively similar microbial communities whereas distant time points were highly dissimilar. Functional attributes of the network of microbial community and community metabolome such as scale free topology may help the soil system to recover from the perturbation delivered by ASD once it is aerated.</div>