New insights into RNA mycoviruses of fungal pathogens causing Fusarium head blight.

Fusarium head blight (FHB) continues to be a major problem in wheat production and is considered a disease complex caused by several fungal pathogens including Fusarium culmorum, F. graminearum and F. equiseti.

Integrating viruses into soil food web biogeochemistry.

The soil microbiome is recognized as an essential component of healthy soils. Viruses are also diverse and abundant in soils, but their roles in soil systems remain unclear. Here we argue for the consideration of viruses in soil microbial food webs and describe the impact of viruses on soil biogeochemistry.

Transmission of mycoviruses: new possibilities.

Mycoviruses are viruses that infect fungi. In recent years, an increasing number of mycoviruses have been reported in a wide array of fungi. With the growing interest of scientists and society in reducing the use of agrochemicals, the debate about mycoviruses as an effective next-generation biocontrol has regained momentum.

The potential of SBW25 to produce viscosin enhances wheat root colonization and shapes root-associated microbial communities in a plant genotype-dependent manner in soil systems.

Unlabelled: Microorganisms interact with plant roots through colonization of the root surface, i.e., the rhizoplane or the surrounding soil, i.

Fungal removal of cyanotoxins in constructed wetlands: The forgotten degraders.

Harmful cyanobacterial blooms have increased globally, releasing hazardous cyanotoxins that threaten the safety of water resources. Constructed wetlands (CWs) are a nature-based and low-cost solution to purify and remove cyanotoxins from water. However, bio-mechanistic understanding of the biotransformation processes expected to drive cyanotoxin removal in such systems is poor, and primarily focused on bacteria.

Temporal dynamics of volatile fatty acids profile, methane production, and prokaryotic community in an rumen fermentation system fed with maize silage.

Anaerobic fermentation is widely used to simulate rumen kinetics and study the microbiome and metabolite profiling in a controlled lab environment. However, a better understanding of the interplay between the temporal dynamics of fermentation kinetics, metabolic profiles, and microbial composition in rumen fermentation batch systems is required. To fill that knowledge gap, we conducted three rumen fermentations with maize silage as the substrate, monitoring total gas production (TGP), dry matter degradability (dDM), and methane (CH) concentration at 6, 12, 24, 36, and 48 h in each fermentation.

Improving the nutritional values of yellow mealworm Tenebrio molitor (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae) larvae as an animal feed ingredient: a review.

Yellow mealworm larvae (YML; Tenebrio molitor) are considered as a valuable insect species for animal feed due to their high nutritional values and ability to grow under different substrates and rearing conditions. Advances in the understanding of entomophagy and animal nutrition over the past decades have propelled research areas toward testing multiple aspects of YML to exploit them better as animal feed sources. This review aims to summarize various approaches that could be exploited to maximize the nutritional values of YML as an animal feed ingredient.

Activity of root-knot nematodes associated with composition of a nematode-attached microbiome and the surrounding soil microbiota.

We investigated if activity of the pre-infective juveniles (J2s) of root-knot nematodes is linked to the recruitment of a specific microbiome on the nematode surface and/or to the composition of the surrounding microbiota. For this, we determined the J2 activity (active vs. non-motile, which referred to dead and immobile J2s) upon a 3-day incubation in soil suspensions and studied the composition of bacteria, protists, and fungi present on the nematode surface and in the suspensions using amplicon sequencing of the 16S/18S rRNA genes, and ITS region.

Meeting report: The first soil viral workshop 2022.

Soil viral ecology is a growing research field; however, the state of knowledge still lags behind that of aquatic systems. Therefore, to facilitate progress, the first Soil Viral Workshop was held to encourage international scientific discussion and collaboration, suggest guidelines for future research, and establish soil viral research as a concrete research area. The workshop took place at Søminestationen, Denmark, between 15 and 17th of June 2022.

Fusarium oxysporum Disrupts Microbiome-Metabolome Networks in Arabidopsis thaliana Roots.

While the plant host metabolome drives distinct enrichment of detrimental and beneficial members of the microbiome, the mechanistic interomics relationships remain poorly understood. Here, we studied microbiome and metabolome profiles of two Arabidopsis thaliana accessions after Fusarium oxysporum f.sp.

Fungal Communities of Spring Barley from Seedling Emergence to Harvest During a Severe Puccinia hordei Epidemic.

All plant tissues from leaves, stems, and roots are hosting a wide diversity of fungal species. Our understanding of the assembly of this diversity of fungi during the plant growth cycle is limited. Here, we characterized the mycobiome of three spring barley cultivars grown in Zealand, Denmark, at weekly intervals during a growth season from seedling emergence to senescence and seed maturity.

Arabidopsis assemble distinct root-associated microbiomes through the synthesis of an array of defense metabolites.

Plant associated microbiomes are known to confer fitness advantages to the host. Understanding how plant factors including biochemical traits influence host associated microbiome assembly could facilitate the development of microbiome-mediated solutions for sustainable plant production. Here, we examined microbial community structures of a set of well-characterized Arabidopsis thaliana mutants disrupted in metabolic pathways for the production of glucosinolates, flavonoids, or a number of defense signalling molecules.

Breeding selection imposed a differential selective pressure on the wheat root-associated microbiome.

Plants-microbiome associations are the result of millions of years of co-evolution. Due to breeding-accelerated plant evolution in non-native and highly managed soil, plant-microbe links could have been lost. We hypothesized that post-domestication breeding of wheat changed the root-associated microbiome.

Insights into the earthworm gut multi-kingdom microbial communities.

Earthworms are widely known to impact soil health, having a key role in nutrient cycling and are often referred to as soil engineers. They are vital for soil microbial assemblages particularly through their feeding and burrowing activity in soil. Earthworms feed on soil organic matter and litter, and the resulting casts alter the soil microbial community.

Fusarium Head Blight Modifies Fungal Endophytic Communities During Infection of Wheat Spikes.

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devastating disease of wheat heads. It is caused by several species from the genus Fusarium. Several endophytic fungi also colonize wheat spikes asymptomatically.

Maize synthesized benzoxazinoids affect the host associated microbiome.

Background: Plants actively shape their associated microbial communities by synthesizing bio-active substances. Plant secondary metabolites are known for their signaling and plant defense functions, yet little is known about their overall effect on the plant microbiome. In this work, we studied the effects of benzoxazinoids (BXs), a group of secondary metabolites present in maize, on the host-associated microbial structure.

Fungal Communities Including Plant Pathogens in Near Surface Air Are Similar across Northwestern Europe.

Information on the diversity of fungal spores in air is limited, and also the content of airborne spores of fungal plant pathogens is understudied. In the present study, a total of 152 air samples were taken from rooftops at urban settings in Slagelse, DK, Wageningen NL, and Rothamsted, UK together with 41 samples from above oilseed rape fields in Rothamsted. Samples were taken during 10-day periods in spring and autumn, each sample representing 1 day of sampling.

Oomycete Communities Associated with Reed Die-Back Syndrome.

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Spatiotemporal Variation and Networks in the Mycobiome of the Wheat Canopy.

The phyllosphere is an important habitat for a diverse microbiome and an important entry point for many pathogens. Factors that shape the phyllosphere microbiome and also the co-existence among members and how they affect disease development are largely understudied. In this study we examined the wheat mycobiome by using metabarcoding of the fungal ITS1 region.

Effect of Verticillium dahliae Soil Inoculum Levels on Spinach Seed Infection.

Verticillium dahliae is a soilborne pathogen and a threat to spinach seed production. The aim of this study was to understand the relation between V. dahliae soil inoculum and infection in harvested seed.

Host genotype is an important determinant of the cereal phyllosphere mycobiome.

The phyllosphere mycobiome in cereals is an important determinant of crop health. However, an understanding of the factors shaping this community is lacking. Fungal diversity in leaves from a range of cultivars of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum), winter and spring barley (Hordeum vulgare) and a smaller number of samples from oat (Avena sativa), rye (Secale cereale) and triticale (Triticum × Secale) was studied using next-generation sequencing.

High-throughput sequencing of nematode communities from total soil DNA extractions.

Background: Nematodes are extremely diverse and numbers of species are predicted to be more than a million. Studies on nematode diversity are difficult and laborious using classical methods and therefore high-throughput sequencing is an attractive alternative. Primers that have been used in previous sequence-based studies are not nematode specific but also amplify other groups of organisms such as fungi and plantae, and thus require a nematode enrichment step that may introduce biases.

An improved high throughput sequencing method for studying oomycete communities.

Culture-independent studies using next generation sequencing have revolutionized microbial ecology, however, oomycete ecology in soils is severely lagging behind. The aim of this study was to improve and validate standard techniques for using high throughput sequencing as a tool for studying oomycete communities. The well-known primer sets ITS4, ITS6 and ITS7 were used in the study in a semi-nested PCR approach to target the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 of ribosomal DNA in a next generation sequencing protocol.

Eggplant mild leaf mottle virus (EMLMV), a new putative member of the genus Ipomovirus that harbors an HC-Pro gene.

Since 2003, a new viral disease of eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) has been spreading in fields in the Jordan and Arava Valleys, Israel. The symptoms of this disease include mild leaf mottling and varying degrees of fruit distortion.