Abstract
Epiphytic orchids are commonly found in exposed environments, which plausibly lead to different root fungal community structures from terrestrial orchids. Until recently, few studies have been conducted to show the fungal community structure during the growth of a photosynthetic and epiphytic orchid in its natural growing site. In this study, the Vanda falcata (commonly known as Neofinetia falcata), one of Japan’s ornamental orchids, was used to characterize the fungal community structure at different developmental stages. Amplicon sequencing analysis showed that all development stages contain a similar fungal community: Ascomycota dominate half of the community while one-third of the community belongs to Basidiomycota. Rhizoctonia-like fungi, a polyphyletic basidiomycetous fungal group forming mycorrhizas in many orchids, exist even in a smaller portion (around one-quarter) compared to other Basidiomycota members. While ascomycetous fungi exhibit pathogenicity, two Ceratobasidium strains isolated from young and adult plants could initiate seed germination in vitro. It was also found that the colonization of mycorrhizal fungi was concentrated in a part of the root where it directly attaches to the phorophyte bark, while ascomycetous fungi were distributed in the velamen but never colonized cortical cells. Additionally, the root parts attached to the bark have denser exodermal passage cells, and these cells were only colonized by mycorrhizal fungi that further penetrated into the cortical area. Therefore, we confirmed a process that physical regulation of fungal entry to partition the ascomycetes and mycorrhizal fungi results in the balanced mycorrhizal symbiosis in this orchid.
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Data availability
The raw sequence reads have been deposited into the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) Sequence Read Archive database under the accession number DRA012420 for ITS1 and DRA012422 for ITS2. OTU sequences were registered as LC602782–LC602786 for Ceratobasidium, LC602787–LC602792 for Serendipita, and LC602793–LC602794 for Tulasnella. ITS sequences of isolated Ceratobasidium were registered as LC600231for BI-103P and LC600232 for DE-52P.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) scholarship to GCP and Research Fellowships of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for Young Scientists (grant number 201801755) to CM. We also thank Takahiro Yagame (Mizuho Kyodo Museum) for the provision of Ceratobasidium TA1-1 and TA2-1, Kenji Suetsugu (Kobe University) for the critical reading of the manuscript, and Rudy Hermawan (Tottori University) for technical assistance.
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GCP, CM, MY, and HK designed the experiments; GCP and IN performed the experiments and analyzed the sequencing data; GCP, CM, MY, and HK wrote the manuscript. All authors approved the final manuscript.
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Pujasatria, G.C., Nishiguchi, I., Miura, C. et al. Orchid mycorrhizal fungi and ascomycetous fungi in epiphytic Vanda falcata roots occupy different niches during growth and development. Mycorrhiza 32, 481–495 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-022-01089-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00572-022-01089-y