Microeukaryotic Communities on the Fruit of <i>Gardenia thunbergia</i> Thunb. with a Focus on Pathogenic Fungi

• Main Authors: Bastian Steudel, Himansu Baijnath, Thorben Schwedt, Armin Otto Schmitt
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-05-01
• Series: Pathogens
• Subjects: environmental DNA; ITS2; global trading; ornamental plants
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0817/10/5/555

Woody fruit which stay on ornamental plants for a long time may present a risk of infection to other organisms due to the presence of pathogens on their surface. We compared the microbe communities on the fruit surfaces of garden ornamental <i>Gardenia</i> <i>thunbergia</i> Thunb. with those on other surfaces in the study region. As <i>Gardenia</i> fruit contain antifungal substances, the focus of this study was on the fungal communities that exist thereon. We used Illumina sequencing to identify Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASV) of the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of the ribosomal RNA. The microbial communities of the <i>Gardenia</i> fruit are distinct from the communities from the surrounding environments, indicating a specialized microhabitat. We employed clustering methods to position unidentified ASVs relative to known ASVs. We identified a total of 56 ASVs representing high risk fungal species as putative plant pathogens exclusively found on the fruit of <i>Gardenia</i>. Additionally, we found several ASVs representing putative animal or human pathogens. Those pathogens were distributed over distinct fungi clades. The infection risk of the high diversity of putative pathogens represented on the <i>Gardenia</i> fruit needs to be elucidated in further investigations.