The complex and multilateral interactions between plants, mycorrhizal fungi, bacteria, and other soil microfauna greatly contribute to ecosystem health and agricultural productivity by affecting plant performance and ecosystem functioning. These complex cross-kingdom interactions primarily occur in the plant rhizosphere, where plant roots recruit beneficial soil microbes to promote nutrient acquisition for plant growth and resilience against both abiotic and biotic stressors. For instance, mycorrhizal fungi (MF) are well-known to form symbiotic relationships with host plants. MF provides minerals, especially phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in exchange for plant photosynthetically fixed C (e.g., lipids and sugars), thereby benefiting the nutrient uptake and stress tolerance of plants. Meanwhile, soil bacteria and microfauna also participate in MF-plant symbiosis. Carbon deposition from roots and mycorrhizal fungi can strongly shape microfaunal and bacterial communities. In return, soil bacteria can support the mineral nutrition of MF and improve its growth activity by secreting extracellular enzymes.

Although these cross-kingdom interactions involving plants, mycorrhizal fungi, and bacteria hold great potential to sustain the fast growth and health of plants by enhancing plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), and suppressing pathogens, our knowledge of their dynamic variations, molecular interaction mechanisms, and control factors are still very limited. Thus, it is urgent to comprehensively investigate how the cross-kingdom interactions between plants, mycorrhizal fungi, and bacteria influence soil biogeochemical cycles and how these groups interact with each other to regulate nutrient exchange across plant-mycorrhizal fungi-bacteria continuum, which is key to unlocking sustainable agricultural strategies in the changing world.

This Research Topic embraces studies exploring the mechanistic basis of the cross-kingdom interactions between plant, mycorrhizal fungi, rhizobacteria, and other soil microfauna, and their potential applications in sustainable agriculture. By integrating insights from ecology, microbiology, and plant sciences, the goal is to advance our understanding of both the plant effects on rhizosphere and hyphosphere microbial communities, as well as the feedback of the cross-kingdom interactions on plant fitness, which ultimately helps to develop sustainable solutions for improving soil health, enhancing crop yields, and mitigating environmental stressors, thereby contributing to global food security.

Topics are welcomed but not limited to:

• The recruitment and colonization mechanisms of beneficial microbiome (e.g., mycorrhizal fungi and PGPR) in plant rhizosphere;
• Metabolite exchange networks drive cooperation between plants, mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria;
• Molecular basis of collaboration and mutual regulation between plants, mycorrhizal fungi, and bacteria;
• Strategies of plant-fungi-bacteria partnerships in improving plant resilience to abiotic (e.g., metal pollution) and biotic (e.g., pathogens) stressors;
• The applications of plant-fungi-bacteria symbiosis in sustainable agriculture;
• Novel techniques and approaches to study the cross-kingdom interactions between plant, mycorrhizal fungi and bacteria

Please note that Frontiers in Microbiology does not consider descriptive studies of microbial communities solely based on amplicon sequencing profiles (e.g., 16S rRNA and ITS) unless an explicit hypothesis and experimentation are made, and provide insight into the microbial process and strategy being studied.

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Frontiers in Microbiology

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