Metagenomic Exploration of Endophytic Fungal Diversity in Germinating Groundnut Seed

Abstract

Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L) a oil seed legume crop has been widely cultivated and its adaptability and commercialisation is closely related to its mycobiota. Nevertheless, although these beneficial microorganisms participate in seed formation, the metabolism of nutrients, disease immunity and resistance to stress, there is hardly any attention given to this microbiota diversity because culture-dependent approaches are limited. In this study, a high-throughput metagenomic sequencing using ITS [internal transcribed space] region was employed for analyzing the endophytic fungal community during groundnut seed germination. The seeds after collected from Acharapakkam, Tamil Nadu, India, were surface sterilized and germinated in the laboratory and subjected to Illumina MiSeq sequencing. A total of 197 fungal species in which (72.91%) belong to the Ascomycota were assigned to taxonomy using QIIME2-based genomics processing and compared to the UNITE database. The proportion of yeast-like as opposed to filamentous  taxa such as Candida, Pichia, Wickerhamiella and Kodamaea against Aspergillus, Talaromyces and Fusarium were more prevalent in this study. Also some rare and curious taxa,under phyllum Basidiomycota such as Tylospora asterophora, Sterigmatomyces halophilus and Basidiodendron pelinum have brought to light the secret diversity dwelling in groundnut tissues in metagenomic study. Functional annotation presented high diversity of ecological roles,comprising commensalism,mycoparasitism,saprotrophic and opportunistic pathogenicity.This study integrates a metagenomic approach with traditional fungal microbiological research to gain a comprehensive understanding of beneficial fungal populations. This study finds that germinating groundnut seeds have a changing and functional diverse mycobiome that confer resilient and early growth of the plant.