Abstract
In their natural environment, plants are part of a rich ecosystem including numerous and diverse microorganisms in the soil. It has been long recognized that some of these microbes, such as mycorrhizal fungi or nitrogen fixing symbiotic bacteria, play important roles in plant performance by improving mineral nutrition. However, the full range of microbes associated with plants and their potential to replace synthetic agricultural inputs has only recently started to be uncovered. In the last few years, a great progress has been made in the knowledge on composition of rhizospheric microbiomes and their dynamics. There is clear evidence that plants shape microbiome structures, most probably by root exudates, and also that bacteria have developed various adaptations to thrive in the rhizospheric niche. The mechanisms of these interactions and the processes driving the alterations in microbiomes are, however, largely unknown. In this review, we focus on the interaction of plants and root associated bacteria enhancing plant mineral nutrition, summarizing the current knowledge in several research fields that can converge to improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning this phenomenon.
Highlights
The Interconnection of Plants with Soil Microbes plant physiologists sometimes view soil as a source of nutrients to plants, it is a complex ecosystem hosting bacteria, fungi, protists, and animals (Bonkowski et al, 2009; Muller et al, 2016)
The analysis proves that genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Arabidopsis accessions is a feasible approach to identify genetic loci that control the phenotypic variation in plant–microbe interactions
Considering the environmental damage associated with current fertilization practices, a current research priority is to optimize plant–microbe nutritional interactions for more sustainable agricultural systems
Summary
Plant physiologists sometimes view soil as a source of nutrients to plants, it is a complex ecosystem hosting bacteria, fungi, protists, and animals (Bonkowski et al, 2009; Muller et al, 2016). One possibility involves comparing genotypes that have shown contrasting affinity to recruit favorable microbes (Haney et al, 2015), or genotypes that differ in their nutrient starvation responses (Ikram et al, 2012) Another option is root exudate profiling to analyze the phenotypic effects of mutants that were identified by GWAS studies (Wintermans et al, 2016). Even if the soil microbiota contains strains with genes encoding the aforementioned enzymes linked to soil health, soil conditions must be optimized for these microbial proteins to be expressed and active (Paterson, 2003) Another method to measure metabolic capacity of soils involves community level physiological profiling assays, which measures substrate degradation affinity across different fertilization regimes, usually these assays are designed with an emphasis on degradation of C-sources rather than sources of N, P, and S. Such knowledge will enable the rational selection of growth-promoting strains and communities, driven by defined genetic and biochemical mechanisms
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