Exploitation of the rhizosphere microbiome for sustainable agriculture

• Grant number: 22/02450-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: October 24, 2022
• End date: October 23, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Mendes
• Grantee: Rodrigo Mendes
• Host Investigator: Eoin Brodie
• Host Institution: Embrapa Meio-Ambiente. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (EMBRAPA). Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento (Brasil). Jaguariúna , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, United States

Abstract

Microorganisms regulate biogeochemical cycles in the environment and interact with each other and with their hosts, playing a central role in maintaining life on Earth. Complex microbial communities, or microbiomes, that inhabit the soil region close to the roots interact with plants influencing their development and physiology. Although recent studies have described the composition and functionality of the rhizosphere microbiome in numerous species of plants, the exploitation of these interactions for sustainable agriculture still depends on the development of tools and conceptual frameworks enabling the transition from a descriptive approach to mechanistic studies. The search for mechanistic explanations is key to advancing the possibility of making predictions to obtain the information necessary for the manipulation of systems that allow exploring the services offered by the rhizosphere microbiome. The manipulation of microbiome interactions in the rhizosphere of plants has the potential to reduce agricultural inputs as pesticides, fertilizers and water, as well as to recover degraded soils and favoring the carbon balance in production systems. Thus, the present proposal has the general objective to establish causality in microbial processes related to carbon cycling in the rhizosphere that will be used for predictions and modeling of the microbiome assembly in the rhizosphere and its consequences for carbon cycling. For this, bioassays will be conducted using an artificial root system (microrhizon), colonized by synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) and subjected to a multi-omic analytical approach to access the structure and functionality of the microbiome. With this, we expect to identify microbiome functional traits driving carbon sequestration in the rhizosphere. (AU)