Soil obtained from across nine UK locations was used to cultivate six key arable crops (wheat, barley, oats, fava beans, oilseed rape, and sugar beet). Researchers found that although the local soil environment selected which kinds of bacteria were present, the crop species determined the beneficial microbial functions of those bacteria. The findings have significant implications for the design of microbial inoculants and microbiome-assisted breeding strategies for sustainable agriculture.
The research team from Rothamsted Research, CABI, The John Innes Center, The James Hutton Institute and The Scottish Rural Agricultural College, used the UK Crop Microbiome Cryobank (UKCMCB), the world’s first open crop and soil microbiome resource, to characterize more than 24,000 bacterial cultures and 315 soil microbiome libraries.
“What really stood out was that the soil environment dictates which bacteria are present, but the crop selects bacteria based on what beneficial functions they provide,” said lead author Dr. Rodrigo Taketani of Rothamsted Research.
“This tells us that plants are actively selecting microbes for their functional properties—for example, to help with nutrient acquisition or stress tolerance—drawing on locally available bacteria to provide these services.”