Diverse organic carbon activates soil microbiome functioning via niche modulation

Considering the“One Health”framework,the soil microbial community is essential for plant,animal,and ultimately to human health(Banerjee and van der Heijden,2023).Similar to the microbiome in human gut(Berendsen et al.,2012),the plant-associated microbiota drives key functions in agroecosystems,such as supporting nutrient uptake,suppressing plant pathogens,or improving host stress tolerance(Hartmann and Six,2023).However,continuous mono-cropping run in intensified agroecosystems often leads to the loss of soil biodiversity,reduces resistance to plant pathogens,and ultimately causes the outbreak of soil-borne diseases(Tsiafouli et al.,2015;Raaijmakers and Mazzola,2016).This represents a major threat to global food security and sustainable development in agriculture(Strange and Scott,2005;Butler,2013).Accordingly,soil microbiome engineering is widely recognized as a promising approach to promote plant health and agricultural sustainability(Raaijmakers and Mazzola,2016;Hartman et al.,2018).

Rhizosphere immunity: targeting the underground for sustainable plant health management

Managing plant health is a great challenge formodern food production and is further complicated by thelack of common ground between the many disciplinesinvolved in disease control. Here we present the concept ofrhizosphere immunity, in which plant health is consideredas an ecosystem level property emerging from networks ofinteractions between plants, microbiota and the surround-ing soil matrix. These interactions can potentially extendthe innate plant immune system to a point where therhizosphere immunity can fulfil all four core functions ofafull immune system: pathogen prevention, recognition,response and homeostasis. We suggest that consideringplant health from a meta-organism perspective will help indeveloping multidisciplinary pathogen management stra-tegies that focus on steering the whole plant-microbe-soilnetworks instead of individual components. This might beachieved by bringing together the latest discoveries inphytopathology, microbiome research, soil science andagronomy to pave the way toward more sustainable andproductive agriculture.