Comparative Analysis of Rhizosphere Microbiome Diversity in Lentil Landraces and Bred Cultivars

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) is a major grain legume of Mediterranean agriculture and global diets, valued for its nutritional and agronomic importance. Although its symbiosis with rhizobia has been extensively studied, considerably less is known about the broader rhizosphere microbial communities associated with genetically diverse lentil germplasm. In this study, targeted amplicon sequencing was used to characterize the rhizosphere bacterial and fungal communities associated with a diverse collection of lentil landraces and commercial cultivars grown simultaneously under identical field conditions. The integration of SSR-based genetic characterization with microbial community profiling enabled a complementary assessment of the association between host genetic diversity and rhizosphere microbial community composition. A conserved core microbiome was identified across all genotypes, while distinct differences in microbial diversity and community composition were observed among individual genotypes, indicating distinct genotype-associated microbial community profiles. Differential associations of several microbial taxa, including diazotrophic, plant growth-promoting, and potential soil-borne pathogenic microorganisms, were also observed among genotypes despite their cultivation under identical environmental conditions. Collectively, this study provides a comparative characterization of rhizosphere microbial communities associated with a genetically diverse lentil germplasm collection and establishes a genetically characterized framework for future comparative studies of plant-microbe interactions. These findings open new perspectives for breeding strategies that consider beneficial plant-microbe associations alongside host genetic diversity.