The'microbiome counterattack': Insights on the soil androot-associated microbiome in diverse chickpea and lentilgenotypes after an erratic rainfall event

Legumes maintain soil fertility thanks to their associated microbiota but arethreatened by climate change that causes soil microbial community struc-tural and functional modifications. The core microbiome associated with dif-ferent chickpea and lentil genotypes was described after an unexpectedclimatic event. Results showed that chickpea and lentil bulk soil micro-biomes varied significantly between two sampling time points, the firstimmediately after the rainfall and the second 2 weeks later. Rhizobia wereassociated with the soil of the more productive chickpea genotypes in termsof flower and fruit number. The root-associated bacteria and fungi were sur-veyed in lentil genotypes, considering that several parcels showed diseasesymptoms. The metabarcoding analysis revealed that reads related to fun-gal pathogens were significantly associated with one lentil genotype. A lentilcore prokaryotic community common to all genotypes was identified as wellas a genotype-specific one. A higher number of specific bacterial taxa andan enhanced tolerance to fungal diseases characterized a lentil landracecompared to the commercial varieties. This outcome supported the hypothesis that locally adapted landraces might have a high recruiting effi-ciency of beneficial soil microbes.