Microbially produced fertilizer provides rhizobacteria to hydroponic tomato roots by forming beneficial biofilms.

Hydroponic cultivation of Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) is important, and high tomato production depends on the use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers. We had developed a microbial fertilizer (MF), which is mainly composed of nitrate. To investigate the effect of MF on plant growth, hydroponic tomato was grown with MF or commercial inorganic fertilizer (IF), and the microbiomes of the rhizosphere and the liquid phase were analyzed by confocal microscopy and high-throughput sequencing. Plant biomass and biofilm formation were increased by growth in MF compared to IF. The microbial community structures of tomato roots and hydroponic water differed between the two conditions, and three operational taxonomic units (OTUs) dominated in plants grown with MF. The three OTUs were related to Rudaea spp., Chitinophaga spp., and Stenotrophobacter terrae, which are reported to be disease-suppressive epiphytic or endophytic microbes of plant roots. Because these three OTUs also predominated in the MF itself, they were likely provided to the rhizosphere or endophytic environments of tomato roots via hydroponic water. KEY POINTS: • Microbial fertilizer for hydroponic growth enhanced biofilm formation on tomato root. • Microbial fertilizer contains tomato-root epiphytic or endophytic microbes. • Microbial fertilizer provided beneficial microbes to the rhizosphere and endophytic environments of tomato roots via hydroponic water.

Efficient conversion of organic nitrogenous wastewater to nitrate solution driven by comammox Nitrospira.

A bacterium capable of complete ammonia oxidation (comammox) has been widely found in various environments, whereas its industrial application is limited due to the difficulty of cultivation and/or enrichment. We developed a biological system to produce a high-quality nitrate solution for use in hydroponic fertilizer. The system was composed of two separate reactors for ammonification and nitrification and was found to have a stable and efficient performance in the conversion of organic nitrogen to nitrate. To determine the key microbes involved and better understand the system, the microbial communities in the reactors were analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing in combination with a shotgun metagenomic analysis. Canonical ammonia-oxidizing bacteria, which can only catalyze the oxidation of ammonia to nitrite, were detected with negligible relative abundances, while a comammox Nitrospira-related operational taxonomic unit (OTU) dominated the nitrification reactor. Furthermore, the comammox-type ammonia monooxygenase was found to be 500 times more highly expressed than the canonical one by quantitative PCR, indicating that comammox was the main driver of the stable and efficient ammonia oxidation in the system. A microbial co-occurrence analysis revealed a strong positive correlation between Nitrospira and several OTUs, some of which, such as Anaerolinea OTU, have been found to co-exist with comammox Nitrospira in the biofilms of water treatment systems. Given that these OTUs were abundant only on microbe-attached carriers in the system, their co-existence within the biofilm could be beneficial to stabilize the Nitrospira abundance, possibly by physically preventing oxygen exposure as well as cell spillage.