Project Number: 5348-22000-016-08
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jan 01, 2012
End Date: Mar 01, 2014

Objective:
The objectives of this cooperative research are: 1) to analyze the composition of wheat rhizosphere microbial communities in dryland and irrigated field soils; 2) to conduct metagenomic analysis of soil moisture-induced differences in the functional gene composition of microbial communities in the rhizosphere of field-grown wheat; and 3) to generate a high quality draft genome sequence of Pseudomonas fluorescens 2-79.

Approach:
Global microbial community structure in the rhizosphere of wheat grown under irrigated and dryland conditions will be determined each year for two years at three time points during wheat maturation. Genes for 16S rDNA, phzF and cpn60 will be amplified by 454 Titanium pyrosequencing and the data will be deconvoluted and analyzed at Macquarie University. The results will provide information on the major phylogenetic microbial groups represented in each community, examine how each sample differs in terms of species diversity and composition, and reveal whether these differences can be correlated with soil moisture and wheat growth stage. In addition, metagenomic sequences will be determined for one sample each from the irrigated and dryland sites and analyzed to reveal soil moisture-induced differences in functional gene composition of microbial communities in the rhizosphere of field-grown wheat. Finally, DNA from the model biocontrol strain P. fluorescens 2-79 will be prepared in Pullman and sequenced at the Washington State University Genomics Core laboratory. The data will be assembled, ordered, oriented, verified, and subjected to automated annotation at Macquarie University.