Amaranth Plants with Various Color Phenotypes Recruit Different Soil Microorganisms in the Rhizosphere.

To explore and utilize the abundant soil microorganisms and their beneficial functions, high-throughput sequencing technology was used to analyze soil microbial compositions in the rhizosphere of red and green amaranth varieties. The results showed that significant differences in soil microbial composition could be found in the rhizosphere of amaranth plants with different color phenotypes. Firstly, soil bacterial compositions in the rhizosphere were significantly different between red and green amaranths. Among them, , , , , and were the unique dominant soil bacterial genera in the rhizosphere of red amaranth. In contrast, , , and were the special dominant soil bacterial genera in the rhizosphere of green amaranth. Additionally, even though the soil fungal compositions in the rhizosphere were not significantly different between red and green amaranths, the abundance of the dominant soil fungal genera in the rhizosphere showed significant differences between red and green amaranths. For example, , , , and significantly enriched as the dominant soil fungal genera in the rhizosphere of the red amaranth. In contrast, only significantly enriched as the dominant soil fungal genus in the rhizosphere of green amaranth. All of the above results indicated that amaranth with various color phenotypes exactly recruited different microorganisms in rhizosphere, and the enrichments of soil microorganisms in the rhizosphere could be speculated in contributing to amaranth color formations.