Moisture Controls the Suppression of <i>Panax notoginseng</i> Root Rot Disease by Indigenous Bacterial Communities
Cunwu Guo, Min Yang, Bingbing Jiang, Chen Ye, Lifen Luo, Yixiang Liu, Huichuan Huang, Xinyue Mei, Yifan Zhu, Weiping Deng, Fei Du, Xiahong He, Youyong Zhu, Shusheng Zhu
Abstract
Soilborne diseases pose a major problem in high-intensity agricultural systems due to the imbalance of microbial communities in soil, resulting in the buildup of soilborne pathogens. Harnessing indigenous soil microbial suppression is an emerging strategy for overcoming soilborne plant diseases. In this study, we showed that soil moisture is a key factor in balancing microbiome effects on root rot disease. Proper soil moisture management represent an effective approach to maintain microbial disease resistance by enriching disease-suppressive microbiomes. Conversely, moisture stresses may enrich for a disease-inductive microbiome and aid accumulation of host-specific soilborne pathogens threatening crop production. This work could provide a new strategy for sustainable control of soilborne diseases by enriching the indigenous disease-suppressive microbiome through soil moisture management.