Rhizosphere Microbiome of Arid Land Medicinal Plants and Extra Cellular Enzymes Contribute to Their Abundance.

Revealing the unexplored rhizosphere microbiome of plants in arid environments can help in understanding their interactions between microbial communities and plants during harsh growth conditions. Here, we report the first investigation of rhizospheric fungal and bacterial communities of , and using next-generation sequencing approaches. and grows in dry tropical and in arid conditions of Arabian Peninsula. The results indicated the presence of 121 fungal and 3662 bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) whilst microbial diversity was significantly high in the rhizosphere of and and low in Among fungal phyla, and were abundantly associated within rhizospheres of all three plants. However, was only present in the rhizospheres of and , suggesting a variation in fungal niche on the basis of host and soil types. In case of bacterial communities, , , , , and were predominant microbial phyla. These results demonstrated varying abundances of microbial structure across different hosts and locations in arid environments. Rhizosphere's extracellular enzymes analysis revealed varying quantities, where, glucosidase, cellulase, esterase, and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase were significantly higher in the rhizosphere of while phosphatase and indole-acetic acid were highest in the rhizosphere of . In conclusion, current findings usher for the first time the core microbial communities in the rhizospheric regions of three arid plants that vary greatly with location, host and soil conditions, and suggest the presence of extracellular enzymes could help in maintaining plant growth during the harsh environmental conditions.