Smith Monique E, Kavamura Vanessa N, Hughes David, Mendes Rodrigo, Lund George, Clark Ian, Mauchline Tim H
Sustainable Soils and Crops, Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, Hertfordshire, UK.
Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden.
Environ Microbiome. 2025 Jun 8;20(1):64. doi: 10.1186/s40793-025-00723-4.
During the Green Revolution, one of the biggest developments of wheat domestication was the development of new cultivars that respond well to fertilisers and produce higher yields on shorter stems to prevent lodging. Consequently, this change has also impacted the wheat microbiome, often resulting in reduced selection of taxa and a loss of network complexity in the rhizospheres of modern cultivars. Given the importance of rhizosphere microbiomes for plant health and performance, it is imperative that we understand if and how these changes have affected their function. Here, we use shotgun metagenomics to classify the functional potential of prokaryote communities from the rhizospheres of pre-green revolution (heritage) cultivars to compare the impact of modern wheat breeding on rhizosphere microbiome functions.
We found distinct taxonomic and functional differences between heritage and modern wheat rhizosphere communities and identified that modern wheat microbiomes were less distinct from the communities in the surrounding soil. Of the 113 functional genes that were differentially abundant between heritage and modern cultivars, 95% were depleted in modern cultivars and 65% of differentially abundant reads best mapped to genes involved in staurosporine biosynthesis (antibiotic product), plant cell wall degradation (microbial mediation of plant root architecture, overwintering energy source for microbes) and sphingolipid metabolism (signal bioactive molecules).
Overall, our findings indicate that green revolution breeding has developed wheat cultivars with a reduced rhizosphere effect. The consequences of this are likely detrimental to the development of microbiome-assisted agriculture which will require a strong rhizosphere selective environment for the establishment of a beneficial plant root microbiome. We believe our results are of striking importance and highlight that implementation of microbiome facilitated agriculture will benefit from deliberately incorporating the development of beneficial plant-microbiome interactions, alongside traditional yield traits, to advance sustainable wheat production.
在绿色革命期间，小麦驯化的最大进展之一是培育出了对肥料反应良好、茎秆较短且产量较高以防止倒伏的新品种。因此，这种变化也影响了小麦微生物组，常常导致现代品种根际中分类单元的选择减少以及网络复杂性的丧失。鉴于根际微生物组对植物健康和性能的重要性，我们必须了解这些变化是否以及如何影响了它们的功能。在这里，我们使用鸟枪法宏基因组学对绿色革命前（传统）品种根际原核生物群落的功能潜力进行分类，以比较现代小麦育种对根际微生物组功能的影响。
我们发现传统小麦和现代小麦根际群落之间存在明显的分类学和功能差异，并确定现代小麦微生物组与周围土壤中的群落差异较小。在传统品种和现代品种之间差异丰富的113个功能基因中，95%在现代品种中减少，65%差异丰富的读数最佳映射到与星形孢菌素生物合成（抗生素产物）、植物细胞壁降解（微生物对植物根系结构的调节、微生物的越冬能量来源）和鞘脂代谢（信号生物活性分子）相关的基因。
总体而言，我们的研究结果表明绿色革命育种培育出了根际效应降低的小麦品种。这一结果可能对微生物组辅助农业的发展不利，因为微生物组辅助农业需要强大的根际选择环境来建立有益的植物根系微生物组。我们认为我们的结果具有显著重要性，并强调微生物组促进农业的实施将受益于有意纳入有益植物 - 微生物组相互作用的发展，以及传统产量性状，以推动可持续小麦生产。
