Effect of Chicken Manure-Based Fertiliser on Bacterial Communities and Diversity of Tomato Endosphere Microbiota

Abstract The frequent use of chemical fertiliser produces harmful effects on the soil ecosystem. Therefore, biocompatible methods are used to improve plant health and production through natural fertiliser or plant beneficial microorganisms. This study aims to investigate the effect of amended chicken manure-based natural fertiliser on bacterial communities and plant beneficial bacteria of tomato endosphere microbiome using the high throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results showed Proteobacteria (89.4 ± 4.7% to 86.7 ± 3.9%), Actinobacteria (6.03 ± 2.9% to 3.56 ± 2.1%), and Firmicutes (3.34 ± 1.3% to 0.59 ± 0.3%) as the dominant bacterial phyla of tomato endophytic microbiome. Pseudomonas and Bacillus were the most abundant identifiable genera in the chicken manure root (CMR) (amended manure treatments) sample. There was no significant difference in alpha bacterial diversity (Shannon index: p = 0.48) and species richness (Chao 1: p = 0.43) between control original root (OR) and CMR. However, the distribution of the dominant phyla was mainly affected by manure fertilisation. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and PCoA of beta diversity analysis suggested a significant separation in bacterial communities of tomato endophytes between CMR and OR. The most differently abundant bacterial taxa belong to Bacteroidetes in the OR group, whereas the beneficial bacterial communities of Actinobacteria and Firmicutes were more abundant in the CMR group. Therefore, the chicken manure application can significantly affect bacterial communities of tomatoes´ root endophytic microbiome and effectively improve the abundance of the beneficial microbes as biofertilisers.