Research priorities for harnessing plant microbiomes in sustainable agriculture

TLDR

Feeding a growing world population amid climate change requires optimizing food production reliability, resource use, and environmental impacts, and integrating beneficial plant microbiomes—enhancing growth, nutrient use efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance, and disease resistance—offers a promising strategy that demands large‑scale collaboration among academia, industry, and farmers to understand and manage plant‑microbiome interactions in modern agricultural systems. The authors identify research priorities to harness plant microbiomes for sustainable agriculture. These priorities include developing model host–microbiome systems with culture collections and reference genomes, defining core microbiomes and metagenomes, elucidating rules for synthetic, programmable microbiome assembly, determining functional mechanisms of plant‑microbiome interactions, and characterizing plant genotype‑by‑environment‑by‑microbiome‑by‑management interactions. Meeting these goals should accelerate the design and implementation of effective agricultural microbiome manipulations and management strategies, benefiting both consumers and producers of the global food supply.

Abstract

Feeding a growing world population amidst climate change requires optimizing the reliability, resource use, and environmental impacts of food production. One way to assist in achieving these goals is to integrate beneficial plant microbiomes—i.e., those enhancing plant growth, nutrient use efficiency, abiotic stress tolerance, and disease resistance—into agricultural production. This integration will require a large-scale effort among academic researchers, industry researchers, and farmers to understand and manage plant-microbiome interactions in the context of modern agricultural systems. Here, we identify priorities for research in this area: (1) develop model host–microbiome systems for crop plants and non-crop plants with associated microbial culture collections and reference genomes, (2) define core microbiomes and metagenomes in these model systems, (3) elucidate the rules of synthetic, functionally programmable microbiome assembly, (4) determine functional mechanisms of plant-microbiome interactions, and (5) characterize and refine plant genotype-by-environment-by-microbiome-by-management interactions. Meeting these goals should accelerate our ability to design and implement effective agricultural microbiome manipulations and management strategies, which, in turn, will pay dividends for both the consumers and producers of the world food supply.