Bt Maize Line Have No Effect on Endophyte Communities

Bt insect resistant technology aims to decrease the use of chemical pesticides, and thus provide benefits for both human health and the environment. However, there is public concern if these crops could have adverse effects in the interaction between plant and microbes by affecting plant-associated, endophytic microflora. Thus, Michaela Prischl of AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH and colleagues compared the endophytic bacterial communities of plants of the three Bt maize lines (MON89034, MON88017, and MON88017xMON89034) with their non-Bt counterparts, and other conventional maize lines.

The research team obtained 700 bacteria living in plants and characterized them according to their evolutionary relatedness and certain plant growth functions such as production of 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) deaminase and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). Results showed that both soil environment and the plant cultivar had an effect on the phylogenetic diversity of the endophytic communities, but there were no significant effects related to biotech varieties. Production of ACC were varied in all varieties indicating that there were no specific effects of soil environment or varieties. IAA production was found to be affected by the soil environment but not by the plant variety.

Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that maize endophyte communities were highly diverse and have high potential for growth promotion irrespective of cultivar and Bt modifications.

Download a copy of the complete paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2011.12.005.