Study on diversity of endophytic bacterial communities in seeds of hybrid maize and their parental lines

The seeds of plants are carriers of a variety of beneficial bacteria and pathogens. Using the non-culture methods of building 16S rDNA libraries, we investigated the endophytic bacterial communities of seeds of four hybrid maize offspring and their respective parents. The results of this study show that the hybrid offspring Yuyu 23, Zhengdan958, Jingdan 28 and Jingyu 11 had 3, 33, 38 and 2 OTUs of bacteria, respectively. The parents Ye 478, Chang 7-2, Zheng 58, Jing 24 and Jing 89 had 12, 36, 6, 12 and 2 OTUs, respectively. In the hybrid Yuyu 23, the dominant bacterium Pantoea (73.38 %) was detected in its female parent Ye 478, and the second dominant bacterium of Sphingomonas (26.62 %) was detected in both its female (Ye 478) and male (Chang 7-2) parent. In the hybrid Zhengdan 958, the first dominant bacterium Stenotrophomonas (41.67 %) was detected in both the female (Zheng 58) and male (Chang 7-2) parent. The second dominant bacterium Acinetobacter (9.26 %) was also the second dominant bacterium of its male parent. In the hybrid Jingdan 28, the second dominant bacterium Pseudomonas (12.78 %) was also the second dominant bacterium of its female parent, and its third dominant bacterium Sphingomonas (9.90 %) was the second dominant bacterium of its male parent and detected in its female parent. In the hybrid Jingyu 11, the first dominant bacterium Leclercia (73.85 %) was the third dominant bacterium of its male parent, and the second dominant bacterium Enterobacter (26.15 %) was detected in its male parent. As far as we know, this was the first research reported in China on the diversity of the endophytic bacterial communities of the seeds of various maize hybrids with different genotypes.