Integrating nanotechnology with plant microbiome for next-generation crop health

Nanotechnology has enormous potential for sustainable agriculture, such as improving nutrient use efficiency, plant health, and food production. Nanoscale modulation of the plant-associated microbiota offers an additional valuable opportunity to increase global crop production and ensure future food and nutrient security. Nano-materials (NMs) applied to agricultural crops can impact plant and soil microbiota, which offers valuable services to host plants, including the acquisition of nutrients, abiotic stress tolerance, and disease suppression. Dissecting the complex interactions between NMs and plants by integrating multi-omic approaches is providing new in-sights into how NMs can activate host responses and functionality as well as influence native microbial com-munities. Such nexus and moving beyond descriptive microbiome studies to hypothesis-driven research will foster microbiome engineering and open up opportunities for the development of synthetic microbial commu-nities to provide agronomic solutions. Herein, we first summarize the significant role of NMs and the plant microbiome in crop productivity and then focus on NMs effects on plant-associated microbiota. We outline three urgent priority research areas and call for a transdisciplinary collaborative approach, involving plant scientists, soil scientists, environmental scientists, ecologists, microbiologists, taxonomists, chemists, physicists, and stakeholders, to advance nano-microbiome research. Detailed understanding of the nanomaterial-plant-microbiome interactions and the mechanisms underlying NMs-mediated shifts in the microbiome assembly and functions may help to exploit the services of both nano-objects and microbiota for next-generation crop health.

Automated summary

Nanotechnology has great potential in sustainable agriculture, improving nutrient use efficiency, plant health, and food production. Modulating the plant-associated microbiota at the nanoscale provides an opportunity to increase global crop production and ensure future food security. Nano-materials applied to agricultural crops can affect plant and soil microbiota, which play important roles in nutrient acquisition, stress tolerance, and disease control.