Mineral Nitrogen Availability and Isoflavonoid Accumulation in the Root Systems of Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.)

Isoflavonoids, as plant-to-bacteria signal molecules, play an important role in the establishment of the soybean ( Glycine max (L.) Merr.)– Bradyrhizobium japonicum nitrogen (N) fixing symbiosis. They are essential to the development of effective root nodules and responsible for inducing the nod genes of B. japonicum . Because N affects a broad range of infection events, especially the symbiotic events occurring within 18 h of inoculation, it is reasonable to hypothesize that mineral N disrupts the interorganismal signal exchange between soybean host plants and B. japonicum . High performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis of root extracts of soybean, inoculated with B. japonicum or not, grown with various levels of mineral N in the rooting medium were performed to test this hypothesis. The results of these studies indicated that: (1) at early plant growth stages (before the onset of N fixation), a strong negative relationship between N application and soybean root isoflavonoid (genistein and daidzein) concentrations existed; (2) although isoflavonoid (genistein and daidzein) concentrations in both inoculated and non-inoculated soybean root systems were generally decreased by N application, at very low N levels (10 mg N l⁻¹) genistein in the non-inoculated plant roots was not decreased relative to the 0 N plants; (3) averaged over all mineral N treatment levels and sampling times, inoculation of soybean with B. japonicum increased root daidzein concentrations (P > 0.05), but did not affect genistein. Overall, N application reduced the isoflavonoid concentration of soybean root systems, which probably plays a part in the regulation of soybean nodule formation by available N.