A rhizosphere interplay between cypress trees and root-associated bacteria during drought: Poster

Trees are supposed to slow global warming, but these warming lead to trees struggle with drought stress. The root-associated bacterial communities play a main and vital role in maintaining health of the tree host. Here, we exploit Cupressus sempervirens (CIP) saplings to the Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus Subtills) and Gram-negative (Pseudomonas stutzeri) as a model. We followed the soil chemistry, trees physiological responses to drought and alterations in the interaction between CIP roots and those bacteria under a controlled draught period. We found that trees under drought recruit B. Subtills vs P. stutzeri. While P. stutzeri has been shown to accumulate and enhance colonization on roots in irrigated trees. Furthermore, we demonstrated changes in root exudate profiles of trees inoculated with bacteria compared to trees not inoculated. We propose that potential benefit that trees receive from recruitment of specific bacterial lineages due to environment changing allow them to improve drought tolerance. This study might be an important step in developing strategies to combat drought.