Isolation, identification and determination of growth rate of promising microbes found in soil and plants samples collected from highly conserved Brazilian biomes

• Grant number: 24/21892-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Applied Microbiology
• Principal Investigator: Mauricio Bacci Junior
• Grantee: Gustavo Carneiro da Silva
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/10639-5 - Center for Research on Biodiversity Dynamics and Climate Change, AP.CEPID

Abstract

Overall, soil microbiome structured diversity provides the ecological and nutritional basis for plant development. In response, plant chemicals (hormones, ethylene, salicylic, and jasmonic acid), which regulate plant immunity and defense against phytopathogen microbes and insects, modulate microbiome community structure. This regulation induces minor changes in microbial population structure but major impacts on plant defense and developmental physiology. Conversely, other changes in the microbial community may lead to diseases in plants and, indeed, remarkable parallels associating a given microbiota with healthy or sick hosts are also reported for humans, insects, and cattle, and recovering of "good microbes" within the host has been the basis of dysbiosis treatment.These tiny changes in the soil microbial community, particularly plant association with a "beneficial microbiome," have long been hidden from and thus ignored by humans when selecting visible traits related to crop improvement.However, with the advance of next-generation molecular techniques (WP2), soil and plant microbiomes can be accurately characterized, paving the way for the development of management techniques and even commercial products for nature-based crop solutions, which we will develop in the current CEPID proposal. Then, the beneficial microbiome can be artificially restored by industrially manufactured adjuvants.The current MSC proposal intends to search for culturable microbes previously identified in genomic analyses carried out in soil or plants collected from highly conserved Brazilian biomes and select candidates potentially useful for biotechnological purposes.To achieve this goal, culture media designed especially for the target microbes and general microbiological techniques will be used for microbe isolation. Subsequently, isolates will be molecularly identified and cultured in appropriate liquid culture media. Microbes with high growth rates and biomass yields will be set aside for other CEPID WP4 goals related to soil regeneration and plant growth enhancement. The general aim of this project is to isolate, identify, and select microbes that are potentially useful for soil regeneration and plant growth enhancement.