Chickpea genotypes shape the soil microbiome and affect the establishment of the subsequent durum wheat crop in the semiarid North American Great Plains Walid Ellouze a, b, c, * , Chantal Hamel b , Vladimir Vujanovic d , Yantai Gan b , Sadok Bouzid c , Marc St-Arnaud a a Institut de recherche en biologie végétale, Université de Montréal and Jardin botanique de Montréal, 4101 rue Sherbrooke est, Montréal, Québec, Canada H1X 2B2 b Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, P.O. Box 1030, Airport Road, Swift Current, SK, Canada S9H 3X2 c Département de Sciences Biologiques, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Université Tunis El Manar, Campus Universitaire, Tunis 1060, Tunisia d Department of Applied Microbiology and Food Science, University of Saskatchewan, Agricultural Bldg., 51 Campus Dr., Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 5A8 article info Article history: Received 6 January 2013 Received in revised form 27 March 2013 Accepted 1 April 2013 Available online 16 April 2013 Keywords: Cicer arietinum L. Triticum turgidum L. var. durum Plant genotype Soil microbial diversity Soil function Arbuscular mycorrhiza Dryland agriculture Soil water Semiarid prairie Plant breeding abstract Accumulating evidence supports the feasibility of creating biotic soil environments that promote root health using selected plant genotypes. Five years of field experimentation conducted in the semiarid grasslands of North America revealed genotypic variation in the influence of chickpea on the composi- tion of the soil microbial community and on the establishment of the subsequent crop. A 2-year experiment documented the effects of four chickpea cultivars on the arable soil microbiome using cul- tural methods, the cloning and sequencing of soil-extracted DNA, and fatty acid methyl ester profiling. Cultivar CDC Frontier was characterized by low bacterial biomass, whereas Amit and CDC Anna selected similarly structured bacterial communities but contrasting soil fungal communities. Amit and CDC Anna became colonized by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi to the same extent, but the arable soil planted with CDC Anna hosted the highest level of culturable fungal diversity, whereas the soil planted with Amit hosted the lowest. The highest diversity of culturable fungi and the richness of AM fungal ribotypes (11) were also associated with CDC Anna. Amit was preferentially associated with the antagonist species Penicillium canescens. Higher durum wheat stand density was found after CDC Anna than after Amit, indicating that microbial diversity is an important feature of productive soils. The influence of chickpea genotype on the arable soil microbiome and on the establishment of the subsequent durum wheat crop was related to the soil water reserve at depths of 30e120 cm and was eliminated when the chickpea crops experienced drought. Genetic variation in the influence of chickpea on the soil microbiome sug- gests the possibility of selecting genotypes to engineer beneficial soil biotic environments. Inadequate levels of soil water could limit the success of this strategy, however, in rainfed cropping systems of the semiarid grasslands of North America. Crown Copyright Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Soil-borne diseases reduce the efficiency of agriculture, which leads to seepage of nutrients, negative effects on air and water quality and significant yield losses. Most soil-borne pathogens are normal fungal components of the soil microbiota; thus, they can hardly be controlled with synthetic fungicides. Plant protection against soil-borne pathogens relies on crop rotation (Reeleder, 2003). However, options for diversifying cropping systems are often limited, and the build-up of pathogens in soil under short rotations explains seed and root rot, damping off of seedlings, stunting, and crop yield decline (Bennett et al., 2012; Haas and Défago, 2005). Increasing the resilience of agro-ecosystems through the creation of soil biotic conditions suppressive to soil- borne diseases could contribute importantly to the dual goals of improving the sustainability of food production and meeting the challenge of increasing global food production by 50% by 2050 (Chakraborty and Newton, 2011; Chaparro et al., 2012). * Corresponding author. Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre, Agricul- ture and Agri-Food Canada, P.O. Box 1030, 1 Airport Rd., Swift Current, SK, Canada S9H 3X2. E-mail addresses: oualid.ellouz@agr.gc.ca, w_ellouze@yahoo.fr (W. Ellouze), hamelc@agr.gc.ca (C. Hamel), vladimir.vujanovic@usask.ca (V. Vujanovic), yantai.gan@agr.gc.ca (Y. Gan), sadok.bouzid@fst.rnu.tn (S. Bouzid), marc.st-arnaud@ umontreal.ca (M. St-Arnaud). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Soil Biology & Biochemistry journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soilbio 0038-0717/$ e see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2013.04.001 Soil Biology & Biochemistry 63 (2013) 129e141