New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

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Biodiversity of rhizobia nodulating Genista monspessulana and Genista linifolia in Spain

FERNANDO GONZáLEZ-ANDRéS
JESúS-MARíA ORTIZ

Departamento de Biología Vegetal
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros
Agrónomos
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
28040 Madrid, Spain

Abstract  Nineteen strains isolated from nodules of the legume Genista monspessulana (Group M) and 19 strains isolated from nodules of G. linifolia (Group L) were studied on the basis of their random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) patterns, to ascertain whether the rhizobia isolated from them are species-specific. Another objective was to determine whether the random primers used could distinguish our strains from other rhizobial species or biovars. The variance among the patterns obtained for the strains of Group M versus the strains of Group L was estimated using analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA). Variance within every group was much higher than variance among groups. Consequently, the dendrogram obtained after cluster analysis of the presence-absence data matrix for the RAPD profiles, did not show independent branches for the strains of Group M and Group L. A complementary physiological study showed that there were no significant differences between the efficiency of strains from Groups M and L. These results indicate that strains isolated from G. monspessulana and G. linifolia are not species-specific. The dendrogram showed that it was possible to differentiate these strains from 5 other strains belonging to known species and biovars. The molecular differences between strains are not correlated with differences in the efficiency of nitrogen fixation. However, the molecular differences might be related to other characteristics as, for example, adaptation to environmental stress, and this should be analysed in other studies. Therefore, it is recommended that G. monpessulana and G. linifolia plants be inoculated with a mix of different strains.

Keywords  Genista; Rhizobium; Bradyrhizobium; RAPD; DAF; AMOVA; strain specificity

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 1998, Vol. 41: 585-594

0028-8233/98/4104-0585 $7.00/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 1998

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (1579K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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