Abstract
Managing plant health is a great challenge for modern food production and is further complicated by the lack of common ground between the many disciplines involved in disease control. Here we present the concept of rhizosphere immunity, in which plant health is considered as an ecosystem level property emerging from networks of interactions between plants, microbiota and the surrounding soil matrix. These interactions can potentially extend the innate plant immune system to a point where the rhizosphere immunity can fulfil all four core functions of a full immune system: pathogen prevention, recognition, response and homeostasis. We suggest that considering plant health from a meta-organism perspective will help in developing multidisciplinary pathogen management strategies that focus on steering the whole plant-microbe-soil networks instead of individual components. This might be achieved by bringing together the latest discoveries in phytopathology, microbiome research, soil science and agronomy to pave the way toward more sustainable and productive agriculture.
Highlights
Plant pathogens can destroy up to 30% of global agricultural outputs[1] and there is an urgent need to develop disease-resistant cropping systems
One solution to improve plant disease management is to shift away from the reductionist view in which plant health is studied by focusing on individual components in isolation, to a more holistic framework in which plant immunity is considered to emerge as a result of interactions with plant-associated microorganisms and environmental conditions[11]
The rhizosphere contains a vast pool of functional characteristics that are involved in pathogen control, with each compartment showing some analogy with the mammalian immune system
Summary
Plant pathogens can destroy up to 30% of global agricultural outputs[1] and there is an urgent need to develop disease-resistant cropping systems. Plant immunity is typically viewed as a plant-centered process in which traits encoded by the plant genome determine resistance to pathogens. This concept has to some extent been softened by the disease triangle concept. We propose that instead of focusing on individual components of the rhizosphere, intervention strategies should target the whole network formed by the plant, microbiota and the soil they inhabit. The rhizosphere contains a vast pool of functional characteristics that are involved in pathogen control, with each compartment showing some analogy with the mammalian immune system We have divided these into three key components, namely plant-encoded, microbeencoded and soil-determined traits, and characterize and consider their interactions in the context of rhizosphere immunity
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