Cultivable bacteriome dynamics in different Persian oak tissues and soil
during Oak Decline Syndrome development in Iran
Abstract
Persian oak decline is a syndrome within the oak decline complex in
Iran. Profuse stem bleed-ing and larval galleries of the native
buprestid, Agrilus hastulifer characterize the disease. A systematic
study comparing healthy with diseased trees was undertaken. This work
reports the result of isolations from healthy trees and diseased tissue
in affected trees, at eight sites in Iran. Culturable bacterial
communities were identified using the 16S rDNA sequencing. A
significantly higher proportion of symptomatic tissue pieces from
diseased trees (Disease In-dex=5) yielded bacterial growth than other
disease indexes (83.78%). Significantly higher yields were also
obtained from bulk and rhizosphere compared with the root, leaf, and
stem. Overall bacterial communities compositions varied at each site,
but significant similarities were evident in diseased tissues at all
sites. Enterobacteriaceae were dominated in diseased trees whereas
Bacilluceae and Moraxellaceae were remarkable more abundant in healthy
trees. Sig-nificant associations occurred between diseased tissues and
certain bacterial species, implying that the cause of tissue necrosis
was not due to random microbiota. Brenneria goodwinii, Ser-ratia
marecescence, and Dickeya chrysanthemi were key species consistently
isolated from diseased tissue; Campylobacter jejuni and an un-named
Clostridium taxon were also frequent-ly isolated from both healthy and
diseased trees. It was concluded that there was a shift in the
cultivatable bacterial microbiome of diseased trees, with
Enterobacteriaceae strongly repre-sented in symptomatic but not healthy
tissues. No single dominated species was isolated from diseased tissues,
so tissue degradation in oak likely have a polymicrobial cause.