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. 2025 Jan 27;15(1):3382.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-84717-1.

Impact of pollution on microbiological dynamics in the pistil stigmas of Orobanche lutea flowers (Orobanchaceae)

Karolina Wiśniewska  1 , Sebastian Wojciech Przemieniecki  2 , Krzysztof Krawczyk  3 , Anna Hoffmann  3 , Renata Piwowarczyk  4
Affiliations

Impact of pollution on microbiological dynamics in the pistil stigmas of Orobanche lutea flowers (Orobanchaceae)

Karolina Wiśniewska et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Our understanding of the basic relationships of microbiota associated with flowers is still quite limited, especially regarding parasitic plant species. The transient nature of flower parts such as pistil stigmas provides a unique opportunity for temporal investigations. This is the first report of the analysis of bacterial and fungal communities associated with the pistil stigmas of the lucerne parasite, Orobanche lutea. We compared the microorganism communities at different developmental stages and assessed the impact of pollution at the sampling sites. We also examined the plant growth properties (PGP) of bacteria in a culture-dependent analysis. The predominant colonizers of the pistil stigmas were Proteobacteria (99.25%), with Enterobacteriaceae (49.88%) and Pseudomonadaceae (48.28%) being the major families. The prevalent fungal phylum was Basidiomycota (71.64%), with Filobasidiales (33.14%) and Tremellales (27.27%) as dominant orders. Microbial populations in polluted area showed increased bacterial and fungal diversity. Mature stigmas exhibited greater microbial variety compared to immature ones. We found higher fungal than bacteria abundance at both polluted and unpolluted sites. In culture-dependent analysis, immature stigmas from unpolluted area had the least bacterial morphotypes. Identified culturable bacteria represented the Acinetobacter, Erwinia, Micrococcus, Oceanobacillus, Pantoea, Pseudomonas, Serratia, and Staphylococcus genera. The assessment of PGP traits revealed multiple strains with plant growth-promoting potential. Microbial composition varied between polluted and unpolluted sites and was influenced by the flower's developmental stage.

Keywords: Orobanche; 16S rRNA gene; Anthosphere; Internal transcribed spacer (ITS); PGPB traits; Parasitic plants.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests. Ethics declarations: This experiment does not involve human and animal experiments. Experimental research and field studies on plants, including the collection of plant material was complied with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines and legislation, and necessary permissions were obtained.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Studied holoparasitic Orobanche lutea. General habit from polluted and unpolluted areas (a, b, e, f); closed and opened flowers (c, g); ZOOM micrographs of two-lobed mature stigmas of O. lutea with numerous papillae covered with a viscous secretion from polluted and unpolluted areas (d1, d2, h1, h2). Scale bars: 1000 µm. Phot. Karolina Wiśniewska.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Dendrogram of AHC (Agglomerative hierarchical clustering) results showing dissimilarity between analyzed bacterial samples of immature stigmas Orobanche lutea from closed flowers (IM1, IM2, IM3) and mature stigmas from opened flowers (MA1, MA2, MA3) from polluted (PO) and unpolluted areas (UPO) (on the left); Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) plot of bacterial community structure from each sample (on the right).
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Dendrogram of AHC (Agglomerative hierarchical clustering) results showing dissimilarity between analyzed fungal samples of immature stigmas Orobanche lutea from closed flowers (IM1, IM2, IM3) and mature stigmas from opened flowers (MA1, MA2, MA3) from polluted (PO) and unpolluted areas (UPO) (on the left); Non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) plot of fungal community structure from each sample (on the right).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
PCA showing overall relationships between microbial communities and diversity indices in analyzed bacterial (on the top) and fungal (at the bottom) samples of immature stigmas Orobanche lutea from closed flowers (IM1, IM2, IM3) (green) and mature stigmas from opened flowers (MA1, MA2, MA3) (orange) from polluted (PO) (squares) and unpolluted areas (UPO) (dots).
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