By: Kenya Luquin
Figure 1. (A) Abundance of bacteria species in hybrid and native maize varieties. (B) Diversity of species using a technique called Shannon's diversity index. (C) Dissimilarity between hybrid and native maize varieties. Figure taken from Gastélum et al. 2022.
Milpas are fields for growing food crops using an ancient farming system. It involves using techniques that do not harm the environment as much as modern practices because they use less pesticides and fertilizers. Some studies on plants have found that there are bacteria that interact with plants since they are seeds until they are fully grown. These bacteria can be beneficial to the growth of the plant because as the first microbes to interact with the plant, the bacteria can help protect them from pathogens in the soil. In this particular study, Gastélum and colleagues used specific procedures to compare the structure and function of bacteria found in the seeds of native maize from milpas and hybrid maize from modern crops. The results from these procedures demonstrated that there was a greater bacterial diversity in the native maize than in the hybrid varieties. While the results have opened up more questions, they have also shown that there might be a promising source of bacteria in milpas that could be useful to society. Among such microbial diversity we could potentially find bacteria strains whose metabolisms can revolutionize everything from the food industry to medicine.
Original article: Gastélum, G., Aguirre-von-Wobeser, E., de la Torre, M., and Rocha, J. (2022) Interaction networks reveal highly antagonistic endophytic bacteria in native maize seeds from traditional milpa agroecosystems. Environmental Microbiology, 24, 5583-5595
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