Phylogeography and Symbiotic Effectiveness of Rhizobia Nodulating Chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) in Ethiopia
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PLANT MICROBE INTERACTIONS
Phylogeography and Symbiotic Effectiveness of Rhizobia Nodulating Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) in Ethiopia A. H. Gunnabo 1
&
J. van Heerwaarden 1 & R. Geurts 2 & E. Wolde-meskel 3 & T. Degefu 4 & K. E. Giller 1
Received: 28 April 2020 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) used to be considered a restrictive host that nodulated and fixed nitrogen only with Mesorhizobium ciceri and M. mediterraneum. Recent analysis revealed that chickpea can also establish effective symbioses with strains of several other Mesorhizobium species such as M. loti, M. haukuii, M. amorphae, M. muleiense, etc. These strains vary in their nitrogen fixation potential inviting further exploration. We characterized newly collected mesorhizobial strains isolated from various locations in Ethiopia to evaluate genetic diversity, biogeographic structure and symbiotic effectiveness. Symbiotic effectiveness was evaluated in Leonard Jars using a locally released chickpea cultivar “Nattoli”. Most of the new isolates belonged to a clade related to M. plurifarium, with very few sequence differences, while the total collection of strains contained three additional mesorhizobial genospecies associated with M. ciceri, M. abyssinicae and an unidentified Mesorhizobium species isolated from a wild host in Eritrea. The four genospecies identified represented a subset of the eight major Mesorhizobium clades recently reported for Ethiopia based on metagenomic data. All Ethiopian strains had nearly identical symbiotic genes that grouped them in a single cluster with M. ciceri, M. mediterraneum and M. muleiense, but not with M. plurifarium. Some phylogeographic structure was observed, with elevation and geography explaining some of the genetic differences among strains, but the relation between genetic identity and symbiotic effectiveness was observed to be weak. Keywords Genetic diversity . Genospecies . Haplotypes . Mesorhizobial strains . Nucleotides . Spatial patterns
Introduction Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important grain legumes globally, with a total production of 11.6 million Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01620-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * A. H. Gunnabo [email protected] * J. van Heerwaarden [email protected] 1
Plant Production Systems Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands
2
Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Department of Plant Science, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
3
World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
4
International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
tons from an area of 13.2 million ha and with a productivity of 0.88 tons ha−1 [1]. Ethiopia is considered a secondary centre of diversity for chickpea [2] with cultivation dating back to 500 BCE [3, 4]. The country currently cultivates an average
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