Research priorities for harnessing plant microbiomes in sustainable agriculture

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 efficienc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	PLoS biology 2017-03, Vol.15 (3), p.e2001793
Main Authors:	Busby, Posy E, Soman, Chinmay, Wagner, Maggie R, Friesen, Maren L, Kremer, James, Bennett, Alison, Morsy, Mustafa, Eisen, Jonathan A, Leach, Jan E, Dangl, Jeffery L
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Age Agricultural equipment Agricultural practices Agricultural production Agriculture Agriculture - methods Agronomy Analytics Bacteria Barley Biogeography Biological evolution Biology Biology and Life Sciences Blight Botany Climate Climate change Collection Community structure Conservation of Natural Resources - trends Corn Crop diseases Crops Culture collections Data acquisition Data collection Defensive behavior Design analysis Ecology Ecology and Environmental Sciences Environmental impact Food Food Supply Functions (mathematics) Fungi Genomes Genotype & phenotype Medicine and Health Sciences Metabolites Microbiology Microbiota Microorganisms Motivation Nitrogen Nodules Nutrient uptake People and Places Pest control Phenology Photosynthesis Plant biology Plant diseases Plant pathology Plants - microbiology Proteins Reliability Research Design Researchers Sustainable agriculture
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Summary:	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.
ISSN:	1545-7885 1544-9173 1545-7885