Comprehensive Understanding of Crop Phytobiomes is Critical for Meeting the Challenges of Climate Change

To meet the demands of a global human population expected to exceed 9.6 billion by 2055, crop productivity in sustainable agricultural systems must improve considerably in the face of a steadily changing climate and increased biotic and abiotic stressors.  Achieving this will require a holistic, systems level approach that will combine a wide range of disciplines including agronomy, physiology, genomics, genetics, breeding, physics, and modeling.  While significant progress has been achieved in the past years for many crops in developing and characterizing genetic and genomic resources, we still have a very limited understanding of genotype by environment x management (GxExM) interactions that determine productivity, quality, and the ability to withstand biotic and abiotic stressors.  It is becoming increasingly clear that microbes are a key component of the environment and play a critical role in plant health and fitness.  Thus, we need a better understanding of the interactions between the plant, microorganisms, soil, and climate, in other words, the phytobiome.  There is a large diversity of phytobiomes as it will depend on the region, the crop, the soil, etc.  Through the Phytobiomes Initiative (www.phytobiomes.org), a draft roadmap for phytobiomes research and translation has been developed and the establishment of an international, public-private phytobiomes consortium is under way.  The draft research roadmap and the structure of the new International Phytobiomes Consortium will be presented.