Abstract
Establishment of arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis in rice can promote its growth and tolerance to abiotic stress such as drought by improving its access to nutrient and water. The use of AM fungi (AMF) as bio-fertilizer therefore represent an interesting avenue for improving sustainability and resilience of rice cultivation in a context of land degradation and climate change. However, AM-symbiosis can in some context lead to detrimental effect on rice growth. Recent studies suggest that rice response to inoculation can, in addition to fungi and to environmental characteristics, be influenced by specific genetic determinants in rice. In this work, our objectives were to identify QTLs associated with plant response to AM-symbiosis when grown under irrigated and water deficit conditions. For this, plant growth conditions allowing root infection by the AM fungi Rhizophagus irregularis and compatible with high-throughput phenotyping were first determined. Secondly, a fully sequenced panel of 150 African rice (O. glaberrima) was phenotyped for shoot biomass across growth in inoculated and non-inoculated conditions using an imaged-based high-throughput phenotyping platform. Plants were grown in inoculated or non-inoculated conditions for four weeks under irrigation followed by a water deficit for three weeks. In our conditions, a negative effect of inoculation on shoot growth was observed at early vegetative growth under irrigated conditions (at 28 days after sowing; DAS) and after drought stress (at 46 DAS). Expression analyses of rice marker genes involved in different steps of rice/RI interaction, combined with visual observations of fungi structures in the root revealed that the plant established a pre-symbiotic dialogue with the fungi without establishing functional symbiosis. Association analyses between genotype and phenotype for shoot biomass under the inoculated treatment at 28 DAS identified a QTL containing a gene involved in nitrate transport. Our results open interesting ways regarding the role of nitrogen nutrition on AM-symbiosis establishment.