Arable plant communities as surrogates of crop rhizosphere microbiota

Soil microbiota is a crucial component of agroecosystem biodiversity, improving plant growth and providing important services in agriculture. However, its characterization is demanding and expensive. In this context, cross-taxon analyses are useful to detect organisms that are surrogates of other taxonomic groups. Here, we evaluated whether arable plant communities can be used as a surrogate of the rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities of the crop plant Allium ampeloprasum L. No correlations in species richness were detected, while the species composition of plant communities was correlated with that of both bacterial and fungal communities. Such correlations were mainly due to similar responses to environmental factors and were unaffected by the intensity of agriculture, though the latter were correlated with the composition of all the communities. Plant community composition was predictive of fungal community composition only. Our results highlight the potential of arable plant communities to be used as a surrogate of crop rhizosphere microbial communities in agroecosystems.