Composition and activity of endophytic bacterial communities in field-grown maize plants inoculated with Azospirillum brasilense

The application of agricultural practices in which non-leguminous plants are inoculated with growth-promoting diazotrophic bacteria is gaining importance worldwide. Nevertheless, an efficient strategy for using this inoculation technology is still lacking, and a better comprehension of the environmental factors that influence a plant’s ability to support its associative bacterial community is indispensable to achieving standardized inoculation responses. To address the effects of nitrogen (N)-fertilization on the diversity of both the total and metabolically active endophytic bacterial communities of field-grown maize plants, we extracted total DNA and RNA from maize plants inoculated with Azospirillum brasilense strain Ab-V5 that were growing in Oxisol and treated with regular and low levels of N-fertilizers (RN and LN, respectively). Four clonal libraries were constructed and sequenced and the dominant populations analyzed. Partial description of the bacterial diversity indicated that plants receiving RN- and LN-treatments can maintain bacterial communities with similar diversity indexes for the total endophytic bacterial community, although the communities of Novosphingobium and Methylobacterium were unevenly distributed. Fertilization management had a stronger effect on the dominant populations of the metabolically active bacterial community, and 16S rRNA gene libraries from RN plants suggested a lower diversity of such populations in comparison with libraries from LN plants. The agronomic parameters obtained at the end of the crop season indicated that the inoculation treatment was efficient in promoting plant growth. However, the combination of regular treatments with N-fertilizers and plant inoculation did not have an additive effect and actually tended to decrease crop productivity.