Effects of plant genotype and nitrogen level on bacterial communities in rice shoots and roots

To examine whether microbial community structure differs across rice genotypes, automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) was conducted. Nine cultivars of Oryza sativa ssp. indica or japonica and seven lines of other Oryza species were grown in paddy fields with low, standard, and high levels of N fertilization. Multidimensional scaling plots of bacterial ARISA for aerial parts of rice (shoots) revealed that the structure of shoot bacterial communities was significantly affected by plant genotype (indica or japonica) based on similarity tests, whereas root microbiomes were largely affected by the N fertilization level.