Biodiversity in Bacterial Phyla Composite in Arid Soils of the Community of Desert Medicinal Plant Rhazya stricta

Abstract

Rhazya stricta is an important medicinal plant used as native herbal drug to cure various diseases across Asia. Plant-microbe interactions represented by different environment abiotic stress factors that shows effects also on the host plants or on the associated microbial communities. Soil microorganism can be adapted to specific stress conditions and evolve tolerance to this stress. The adjustment of the plant microbiome can productively improve the yield production of essential crops. In the present study, metagenomics analysis of bacterial communities associated with five desert plants (Rhazya stricta, Enneapogon desvauxii, Citrullus colocynthis, Senna italica, and Zygophyllum simplex) was used to highlights the bacterial diversity in the communities of these desert plants, as they also have an importance as folkloric medicinal plants, in addition to their important roles in the ecological and agricultural applications. The results of the bacterial community’s taxonomy showed eleven phyla in each sample, and the most abundant were highlighted for further analysis as it was unassigned phyla. Results indicated that the most commonlyknownphylawere; Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Acidobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, and Bacteroidetes. Further bioinformatics and functional analysis of bacteria are needed to investigate their effectiveness in promoting plant growth and understanding symbiotic relationships under drought-stress conditions, meanwhile, introducing the pinpointed ones in this study will help in achieving this task.