Quantification and Determination of Compatible Bacterial Consortia

Abstract

The sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems is crucial to ensure food security for future generations, and the formulation of plant growth–promoting bacterial consortia has proven useful not only in sustainable agriculture but also in applications such as phytopathogen biocontrol, bioremediation of contaminated soils and waters, biofertilization, organic waste degradation, and the production of industrially relevant enzymes. In this work, we developed a mathematical model to quantify and identify antagonism-free consortia based on double-agar-layer assays with 20 and 33 bacterial strains from independent studies. Simultaneously, we implemented a graph-based geometric model to analyse their topological properties and defined an index to quantify feasible consortia. The proposed methods were experimentally validated, identifying 36,851 and 376,126 subsets of compatible strains, for 20 and 33 strains, respectively. These subsets have the potential to promote plant growth and other biotechnological functions, thus providing a scalable tool for the management of agricultural resources, environmental restoration, and the design of sustainable biotechnological practices.