TY  - JOUR
N2  - Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) used to be considered a restrictive host that nodulated and fixed nitrogen only with Mesorhizobium
ciceri and M.mediterraneum. Recent analysis revealed that chickpea can also establish effective symbioseswith strains of several
other Mesorhizobium species such as M. loti, M. haukuii, M. amorphae, M. muleiense, etc. These strains vary in their nitrogen
fixation potential inviting further exploration. We characterized newly collected mesorhizobial strains isolated from various
locations in Ethiopia to evaluate genetic diversity, biogeographic structure and symbiotic effectiveness. Symbiotic effectiveness
was evaluated in Leonard Jars using a locally released chickpea cultivar ?Nattoli?. Most of the new isolates belonged to a clade
related to M. plurifarium, with very few sequence differences, while the total collection of strains contained three additional
mesorhizobial genospecies associated with M. ciceri, M. abyssinicae and an unidentified Mesorhizobium species isolated from a
wild host in Eritrea. The four genospecies identified represented a subset of the eight major Mesorhizobium clades recently
reported for Ethiopia based on metagenomic data. All Ethiopian strains had nearly identical symbiotic genes that grouped them in
a single cluster with M. ciceri, M. mediterraneum and M. muleiense, but not with M. plurifarium. Some phylogeographic
structure was observed, with elevation and geography explaining some of the genetic differences among strains, but the relation
between genetic identity and symbiotic effectiveness was observed to be weak.
N1  - We thank the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for
partnering in this research through a grant to the Wageningen University
to support the project N2Africa: Putting Nitrogen Fixation to Work for
Smallholder Farmers in Africa
AV  - public
KW  - Genetic diversity
KW  -  Genospecies
KW  -  Haplotypes
KW  -  Mesorhizobial
KW  -  strains
KW  -  Nucleotides
KW  -  Spatial patterns
A1  - Gunnabo, A H
A1  - van Heerwaarden, J
A1  - Geurts, R
A1  - Wolde-meskel, E
A1  - Degefu, T
A1  - Giller, K E
TI  - Phylogeography and Symbiotic Effectiveness of Rhizobia Nodulating Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) in Ethiopia
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-020-01620-8
JF  - Microbial Ecology (TSI)
Y1  - 2020/10//
ID  - icrisat11680
SN  - 0095-3628
PB  - Springer
ER  -