About this Research Topic

Background

There is an urgent need to increase global crop production to meet the demands of the ongoing and predicted rises in population and the challenges of climate change. However, crop production is limited by a range of biotic and abiotic stressors, including pests and pathogens, and salinity and drought, respectively. Plant-associated microbe/microbiome has drawn much attention due to their critical roles in plant growth and health. Some of the beneficial bacteria and fungi in the rhizosphere are capable of colonizing roots, promoting plant growth, and improving plant resistance and tolerance, and are showing great potential in sustainable agricultural production. Both microbial composition and function are dependent on plant-microbe interactions and the environmental background, such as biotic and abiotic stress conditions. The plant physiology in response to biotic and abiotic stressors has been studied for decades, however, there is limited understanding of the beneficial microbe-plant interactions under biotic and abiotic stress conditions, which restrict the application of beneficial microbes in future sustainable food, fuel, and fiber crop production.

Beneficial microbe-plant interactions comprise bi-directional signaling between plants and microbes and among microbes, which play vital roles in plant stress tolerance, and agricultural and forestry ecosystem; however, signals and mechanisms are still unclear. Thus, for the sustainable development of agroforestry systems, it is essential to explore the interactions between beneficial microbes and plants under biotic and abiotic stressors. This Research Topic aims to better understand the function and response mechanisms of beneficial rhizosphere bacteria and plant and microbe signaling molecules to biotic and abiotic stressors.

We welcome the submission of Original Research, Reviews, and Perspectives on “Beneficial Microbe-Plant Interactions Under Biotic/Abiotic Stress Conditions”. The potential topics may include, but are not limited to:

- Plant microbiome assembly under biotic/abiotic stresses (rhizosphere, endosphere, etc.)
- Isolation of beneficial microbes with novel functions (plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, etc.)
- Influence of the microbiome/beneficial microbes to plant stress tolerance (phenotyping, induced systemic resistance/tolerance pathway, genetic modification, etc.)
- Signal molecules from beneficial microbe to help plant against biotic/abiotic stresses (antagonism, secondary metabolism, VOCs, etc.)
- Mechanisms involved in root colonization of rhizosphere microbes under stress (chemotaxis, biofilm formation, root exudates, etc.)
- Technological advances in the study of Microbe-Plant interactions (modeling, bioinformatics, chemistry, physics, experimental evolution, new model species, etc.)
- Root-Soil-Microbe tripartite interaction under stress conditions

Keywords: Beneficial microbe, Biotic stress, Abiotic stress, Microbiome, Rhizosphere, Endosphere, Colonization, Root exudates, Communication, Secondary metabolites

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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