Seminar on Forest Pathology, 29 March 2017

Natural Resources Institute Finland, Viikki, Helsinki

Tree microbiomes: Functional roles and impact on forest health

Fred O. Asiegbu1, Mukrimin Mukrimin

1, Andriy Kovalchuk

1, Risto Kasanen

1, Hui Sun

1,2

1Department of Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland

2Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, China

Email: Fred.Asiegbu@helsinki.fi

Forest trees are known to live in close association with microbial organisms. The nature of

this close association can be commensalism, parasitism or mutualism. The word microbiota

(microbiomes) has been used to describe this ecological community of plant associated

pathogenic, mutualistic and commensal microorganisms. Many of these microbiomes

inhabiting forest trees could have potential impact on the health and disease progression. Our

understanding and perception of plant and tree microbiomes have recently been facilitated

due to novel technological advances using metagenomics and meta-transcriptomics

approaches. Also the availability of massive DNA databases (e.g. NCBI [USA], EMBL

[Europe], DDBJ [Japan]) as well as powerful computational and bioinformatics tools have

helped to facilitate data mining by researchers across diverse disciplines. In this study, we

assessed the primary fungal community colonizing symptomatic and asymptomatic Norway

spruce trees in three different Heterobasidion spp. infected forest sites in Southern Finland.

Our result indicates that fungal community composition were not significantly affected by

geographical sites rather different anatomic regions of the tree formed unique communities.

Further studies are ongoing to unravel the functional roles of these microbes and their

potential impact on forest tree health.