Managing and manipulating the rhizosphere microbiome for plant health: A systems approach

Plants co-evolved with microbes, and plant genotypes that supported microbiomes that increased their own health likely had a fitness advantage under natural selection. Plant domestication and crop breeding under fertilization have largely decoupled the rhizosphere microbiome from plant selection. If important interactions have been lost as a result, there is an exciting opportunity to re-engineer characteristics of beneficial rhizosphere microbiomes back into agricultural cropping systems. New tools will allow us to engineer the rhizosphere with increasing sophistication in the future, but must recognize that the rhizosphere is a highly connected and interactive system.