EFFECTS OF A TEN-BACTERIAL CONSORTIUM ON RICE GROWTH AND RHIZOSPHERE MICROBIAL COMMUNITY COMPOSITION

Abstract

Rice production needs sustainable strategies that reduce dependence on chemical inputs while maintaining growth and yield. In this study, we assembled a ten-bacterial consortium (B10) from dominant rice-associated isolates and evaluated its effects on rice growth and rhizosphere bacterial communities under pot conditions. Compared with the control (CK), inoculation significantly enhanced rice growth, with dry biomass, fresh weight, shoot height, and stem height increasing by 50.7%, 47.6%, 18.2%, and 14.8%, respectively. High-throughput 16S rRNA sequencing showed that the consortium did not significantly alter alpha diversity, but clearly shifted beta diversity and community composition. B10 enriched taxa positively associated with rice growth, including Azospirillum brasilense, Delftia tsuruhatensis, Bdellovibrio, Paracoccus, and Pseudomonas, while reducing several negatively associated taxa. Functional prediction analyses indicated that B10 reshaped the rice rhizosphere into a more favorable microbiome than CK by enriching beneficial predicted metabolic functions and reducing undesirable phenotypes. These results indicate that the consortium promoted rice growth partly through rhizosphere microbiome restructuring. This work shows the potential of multi-strain inoculants in agroecosystems.

Keywords: rice, consortium, rhizosphere, microbiome, inoculation.