Towards a global core mycobiome of banana (Musa spp.)

Abstract

Bananas (Musa spp.) are a staple for more than 400 million people and a major global commodity, yet production remains highly vulnerable to disease. Although healthy plants host diverse fungal communities, high diversity and strong site-to-site compositional turnover hinder efforts to understand and manage these mycobiomes. Identifying taxa that consistently persist across environments may therefore help prioritise targets for further investigation. We used ITS2 metabarcoding of bulk soil and the ectorhizosphere from a single banana cultivar grown in distinct plantation soils across six countries spanning Africa, Asia, and Australia. Across 24 sites, we identified 59 core fungal taxa that met prevalence–abundance criteria across multiple sites and compartments. Despite representing <1% of detected OTUs, these taxa accounted for up to 83% of total community relative abundance and showed strong concordance with our previously reported national core in Australia, indicating spatial and temporal stability. This curated multi-country core assemblage provides a tractable set of taxa for isolation and functional characterisation and establishes a shared reference for sequence-based tracking across studies, supporting future investigation of microbiome-informed approaches for sustainable banana production.