A team led by Thomas Mitchell-Olds of Duke University and Jeff Dangl of the
University of North Carolina wanted to learn more about the impact of soil,
specifically the microbial communities in soil, on a plant's flowering time.
Flowering time has been known to be affected by temperature, water
availability and pathogens, and the team wondered if microbes could also
affect this particular trait in a plant's phenotype.

Duke researchers used Boechera stricta, a relative of the model plant
Arabidopsis. They collected soil samples in Central Idaho, and isolated the
microbes. The Boechera seeds were planted in containers of sterile soils as
well as in containers of sterile soils which had been inoculated with
microbes from natural habitat sites. The team found that the microbes did
impact flowering time.

They found that the microbiome from a sample site delayed flowering time by
2 days. When the microbial populations from this site were compared against
those from the other sample sites, the team found that: "the phyla
Proteobacteria and Crenarcheota were more abundant, and Acidobacteria were
less abundant, in slow-flowering compared to fast-flowering samples in soil
communities."

[jgi.doe.gov]