Effects of CaMSRB2-Expressing Transgenic Rice Cultivation on Soil Microbial Communities

Although many studies on the effects of genetically modified (GM) crops on soil microorganisms have been carried out over the past decades, they have provided contradictory information, even for the same GM crop, owing to the diversity of the soil environments in which they were conducted. This inconsistency in results suggests that the effects of GM crops on soil microorganisms should be considered from many aspects. In this study, we investigated the effects of the GM drought-tolerant rice MSRB2-Bar-8, which expresses the CaMSRB2 gene, on soil microorganisms based on the culture-dependent and culture-independent methods. To this end, rhizosphere soils of GM and non-GM (IM) rice were analyzed for soil chemistry, population densities of soil microorganisms, and microbial community structure (using pyrosequencing technology) at three growth stages (seedling, tillering, and maturity). There was no significant difference in the soil chemistry between GM and non-GM rice. The microbial densities of the GM soils were found to be within the range of those of the non-GM rice. In the pyrosequencing analyses, Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi were dominant at the seedling stage, while Chloroflexi showed dominance over Proteobacteria at the maturity stage in both the GM and non-GM soils. An UPGMA dendrogram showed that the soil microbial communities were clustered by growth stage. Taken together, the results from this study suggest that the effects of MSRB2-Bar-8 cultivation on soil microorganisms are not significant.