Using spontaneous antibiotic-resistant mutants to assess competitiveness of bradyrhizobial inoculants for nodulation of soybean
Spontaneous mutants (3/parental strain) of soybean bradyrhizobia resistant to streptomycin and erythromycin were selected from strains isolated from bradyrhizobial populations indigenous to Cape Fear and Dothan soils. These were used to evaluate (i) the validity of using antibiotic-resistant mutants to make inferences about the competitiveness of parental strains in soil environments and (ii) the recovery of strains in nodules after inoculation of soybeans grown in soils with indigenous bradyrhizobial populations. Streptomycin and erythromycin resistances of all mutants were stable after approximately 27 generations of growth in yeast extract - mannitol medium, but 33% of the mutants lost resistance to erythromycin upon passage through nodules. Only 17% of the mutants were as competitive as their parental strain when inoculated in a ratio near 1:1 in vermiculite. Four of 10 mutants, which differed in competitiveness from their parental strain in vermiculite, had competitiveness against the soil populations equal to that of their parental strain. Therefore, assessment of competitiveness of mutants and parental strains in non-soil media may not accurately reflect their competitiveness in soil systems. For both the Cape Fear and Dothan soils, recovery of a given mutant from nodules of field-grown plants was always lower than from nodules of plants grown in the greenhouse. Inoculation of the entire rooting zone in the greenhouse experiment and of only a portion of the rooting zone in the field experiments may account for this difference in recovery. Techniques that increase the volume of soil inoculated may enhance nodulation by inoculant strains.Key words: Bradyrizobium, antibiotic resistance, competition.