Soil history and the structure of bacterial communities of Brassica napus host plants across different growth stages; 16S V3-V4 metabarcoding from bulk soil, root and rhizosphere
We tested the hypothesis that previously established soil histories would decrease in influencing the structure of Brassica napus bacterial communities specifically over the growing season. We used an on-going agricultural field experiment to establish three different soil histories, plots of monocrop canola (B. napus), or rotations of wheat-canola, or pea-barley-canola. During the following season, we repeatedly sampled the surrounding bulk soil, rhizosphere and roots of B. napus at different growth stages (the initial seeding conditions, seedling, rosette, bolting, and flower) from all three soil history plots. We compared the taxonomic composition and diversity of bacterial communities, as estimated using 16S rRNA metabarcoding, to identify any changes associated with soil history and growth stages on the different B. napus soil bacterial communities