The hidden side of interaction: microbes and roots get together to improve plant resilience

ABSTRACT

Plants have evolved various belowground traits to adapt to the changing environments, and root-associated soil microbes play a crucial role in the response, adaptation, and resilience to adverse environmental conditions. This comprehensive review explores the diverse interactions between plants and soil microbes, focusing on the role of root-associated microbiota, with a particular emphasis on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, in plant responses to diverse environmental conditions. How plant genotype, root traits, and growth environments influence these interactions, and consequently plant resilience and productivity, are discussed. Recent advances in root phenotyping, including traditional and machine learning-based methods are also presented as an innovative tool to study and characterize root-microbe interactions. Overall, these studies highlight the importance of considering the hidden side of the interactions between roots and microbes to improve plant nutrition and protection in the context of sustainable agriculture in the face of climate change.

Highlights

• Roots and associated microbes are relevant for improving plant nutrition and tolerance

• AM symbiosis plays a role in plant responses to environmental stresses

• Root phenotyping could represent an innovative tool to study root-microbe interactions

KEYWORDS:

• Abiotic stress
• AM fungi
• root-associated microbes
• root phenotyping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.