Climate change is one of the greatest concerns of modern agriculture. The increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere resulting in elevated temperature and changes in the precipitation regime can significantly affect the occurrence and severity of plant pathogens. This threat constitutes an area of research in plant-pathogen interaction called ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’– EIDs. In addition, climate change can also lead to shifts in abiotic variables that imposes stresses to plants, such as drought, increased UV radiation, etc.
During the past few years, advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies and computational biology have provided insightful knowledge on how microbial communities living in close association with plants – the plant microbiome – are assembled and recruited under stressful conditions. These so-called ‘plant-beneficial-microbes’ are known to assist plants to cope under (a)biotic stress, for instance through the promotion of plant growth, induction of plant systemic resistance and/or production of natural products.
Developing strategies to effectively manipulate and engineer plant-associated microbiomes is an emergent and highly relevant area of research. Most importantly, it constitutes a topic that requires multi-disciplinary integration of the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, mathematical modeling, microbiology, and molecular biology. As a result, such an effort will collectively guide the identification of the functional basis of beneficial interactions at the molecular and (bio)chemical levels in both plants and microbes. Moreover, it will provide information for better understanding, modeling and predicting plant microbiome assembly and spatiotemporal dynamics.
This Research Topic is open for articles – Original Research, Perspectives, Review, Meta-analysis – that provide novel examples and developments in the area of plant microbiome engineering in the context of (a)biotic stressors. We encourage submissions of biological and mathematical developments with emphasis on the ecology, biology, and manipulation of plant-microbiomes. Studies on both controlled experimental systems and agricultural setting are welcome.
Climate change is one of the greatest concerns of modern agriculture. The increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere resulting in elevated temperature and changes in the precipitation regime can significantly affect the occurrence and severity of plant pathogens. This threat constitutes an area of research in plant-pathogen interaction called ‘Emerging Infectious Diseases’– EIDs. In addition, climate change can also lead to shifts in abiotic variables that imposes stresses to plants, such as drought, increased UV radiation, etc.
During the past few years, advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies and computational biology have provided insightful knowledge on how microbial communities living in close association with plants – the plant microbiome – are assembled and recruited under stressful conditions. These so-called ‘plant-beneficial-microbes’ are known to assist plants to cope under (a)biotic stress, for instance through the promotion of plant growth, induction of plant systemic resistance and/or production of natural products.
Developing strategies to effectively manipulate and engineer plant-associated microbiomes is an emergent and highly relevant area of research. Most importantly, it constitutes a topic that requires multi-disciplinary integration of the fields of ecology, evolutionary biology, mathematical modeling, microbiology, and molecular biology. As a result, such an effort will collectively guide the identification of the functional basis of beneficial interactions at the molecular and (bio)chemical levels in both plants and microbes. Moreover, it will provide information for better understanding, modeling and predicting plant microbiome assembly and spatiotemporal dynamics.
This Research Topic is open for articles – Original Research, Perspectives, Review, Meta-analysis – that provide novel examples and developments in the area of plant microbiome engineering in the context of (a)biotic stressors. We encourage submissions of biological and mathematical developments with emphasis on the ecology, biology, and manipulation of plant-microbiomes. Studies on both controlled experimental systems and agricultural setting are welcome.
