plants & perennial crops 4 people

Plant & microbe partnerships

What a plant recruits from the soil around its roots, what breeding took away from that ability, and whether it can be bred back.

Notes

A crop does not simply sit in a microbial community; it selects one, through what it releases from its roots. That makes the rhizosphere a plant trait as much as a soil property, and therefore something breeding has been acting on for ten thousand years without anyone intending it.

The uncomfortable finding running through this page is that domestication appears to have cost crops some of that ability. Wild relatives and landraces recruit differently from their modern descendants, and in several studies respond more strongly to beneficial soil biology. Selection under high fertiliser inputs would not have preserved a trait whose payoff is finding nutrients that are already being supplied.

Whether the lost function can be bred back is an open question, and the labs here are working on it rather than claiming it.

Working now

Amélie Gaudin Investigates how domestication and breeding altered crop root traits and rhizosphere recruitment, toward root ideotypes that harness beneficial soil biology. active practice James F. White Jr. Described the rhizophagy cycle, in which plant roots cultivate, internalize, and oxidatively extract nutrients from symbiotic microbes before releasing them back to soil. active practice Lori Hoagland Identifies soil amendments and management practices that shift microbiomes to suppress pathogens in organic vegetables, and breeds tomato and carrot lines that respond to beneficial microbes. active practice Maggie R. Wagner Studies how crops and their wild relatives recruit and respond to specific soil microbiomes, including microbial legacies of drought that buffer plants from water stress. active practice

Notes

Working now

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