Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Growing human population and climate change necessitate sustainable solutions that reduce our reliance on agrochemicals, while increasing agricultural productivity. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria is a sustainable approach to increase crop yields. However, the unknown interactions among the plant host, environment, and microbes create challenges for the supplementation and persistence of desirable agricultural microbiomes with robust plant benefits.The overarching goal of this project is to optimize agricultural microbiomes via plant root exudate engineering for sustainable improvement of crop yields, focusing on nutrient use efficiency. We will first identify specific plant-bacteria communication molecules with deterministic influence over soil microbial community assembly mitigating plant nutrient stress. To understand the signal exchange involved in plant microbiome assembly, we will develop high-throughput tools for testing bacteria chemotaxis and growth. Next, we will elucidate how these molecules influence bacterial interspecies competition and community dynamics in agricultural soils via multi-omics. Lastly, we will characterize the functionality of the enriched microbiome to confer increased plant nutrient use efficiency, informing future plant breeding and engineering efforts.Our interdisciplinary team with cross-cutting expertise in chemistry and plant bioengineering (Demirer), microbiology (Newman), and soil multi-omics (Karthikeyan) will fill major knowledge gaps in agricultural microbiomes, alleviate challenges associated with biofertilizers, and reduce overall negative impacts of agriculture.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
0%
Developmental
0%
Goals / Objectives
The overarching goal of this project is to re-optimize agricultural microbiomes via root exudate engineering for sustainable improvement of crop yields. We will first identify specific communication molecules with deterministic influence over soil microbial community assembly mitigating plant nutrient stress. To understand the signal exchange involved in plant microbiome assembly, we will develop high-throughput tools for testing bacteria chemotaxis and growth. Next, we will elucidate how these molecules influence bacterial interspecies competition and community dynamics in agricultural soils via multi-omics analyses. Lastly, we will characterize functionality of the enriched microbiome to confer increased plant nutrient use efficiency.This novel project cross-cutting chemistry, microbiology, plant biology and engineering, and multi-omics will begin to fill major knowledge gaps in realizing the potential of microbiomes to support sustainable agriculture, informing future plant breeding and engineering efforts.
Project Methods
Methods will initially consist of adiscovery-driven approach to identify unique growth substrates and chemoattractants using Biolog microbial metabolic phenotyping plates that come in 96-well microplate format with different compounds aliquoted in each well. These plates will be used to collect growth curve of target rhizobacteria.Other methods include testing bacterial enrichment in soil using metagenomics sequencing, such as 16S and shotgun. These assays will be follwed by plant phenotype characterization to determine plant benefit of rhizobacteria enrichment,and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) assays toelucidate rhizobacteria spatial colonization patterns on plantroots.