Effects of agriculture management on fungal phyllosphere diversity in vineyards and its relationship with native forests

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the main drivers of land conversion and agriculture practices can impact on microbial diversity. Here we characterized the phyllosphere fungal diversity associated with Carmenere grapevines under conventional and organic agricultural management. We also explored the fungal diversity present in the adjacent sclerophyllous forests to explore the potential role of native forest on phyllosphere in vineyards. After conducting deep amplicon sequencing, no significant differences in fungal diversity indices and community structure were detected between organic and conventional vineyards, suggesting that the phyllosphere microorganisms of grapevines are highly resilient to agricultural treatments. On the other hand, we found a high proportion of shared fungal OTUs between vineyards and native forests. In addition, both habitats had similar levels of fungal diversity despite forest samples were derived from multiple plant species. In contrast, the community structure was different between habitats. Nevertheless, the native forest had more unidentified genera and OTUs unique to this habitat than did the vineyards. Cladosporium, Aureobasidium, and Endoconidioma were more abundant in vineyards, whereas Davidiella, Didymella, and Erysiphie were more abundant in forests. Overall, this study argues that a better understanding of the relationship native forests and agroecosystems is needed for maintaining and enhancing ecosystem services provided by natural ecosystems. Finally, knowledge of microbial communities living in the Chilean Mediterranean biome is needed for appropriate conservation management of these biomes and their classification as biodiversity hotspots.