Heritable differences in abundance of bacterial rhizosphere taxa are correlated with fungal necrotrophic pathogen resistance

Host-microbe interactions are increasingly recognized as important drivers of organismal health, growth, longevity, and community-scale ecological processes. However, less is known about how genetic variation affects hosts' associated microbiomes and downstream phenotypes. We demonstrate that sunflower Helianthus annuus harbors substantial, heritable variation in microbial communities under field conditions. We show that microbial communities co-vary with heritable variation in resistance to root infection caused by the necrotrophic pathogen Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, and that plants grown in autoclaved soil showed almost complete elimination of pathogen resistance. Association mapping suggests at least 59 genetic locations with effects on both microbial relative abundance and Sclerotinia resistance. Although the genetic architecture appears quantitative, we have elucidated previously unexplained genetic variation for resistance to this pathogen. We identify new targets for plant breeding and demonstrate the potential for heritable microbial associations to play important roles in defense in natural and human-altered environments.This SRA submission includes the 94 sunflower paired-end sequencing FASTQ files as well as the corresponding 16S bacterial FASTQ files.