b"BACTERIAL RECRUITMENT Instead of trying to force-fit bacteria to new environments or engi-neer plant-bacteria relationships, Dangls team is focused on this kind of natural recruitment of microbes. He and his team are searching for specific strains of naturally occurring bacteria thatThose two thingsinvasion and offer drought resistance and, rather than being a foreign introduc- persistenceare extremely difficult tion, already exist in conjunction with individual crop cultivars.Using researchers favourite R&D plant, Arabidopsis, on agarto do. That, at least in my view,plates in the lab, they start by mimicking a drought environment.is the nub of the problem and The drought-stricken plants look terrible, Dangl says. Theyre about one third the size of control plants. Then we takethe rate-limiting step of designing our collection of bacteriamaybe 20 or 30 strains, all of which aremicrobials or the plants thatisolated from various soils but are the same genotype [of bacteria] and from the same [crop cultivar]and we treat the sick plantsrecruit them. with the microbes. Our goal is to find a specific strain that rescues these terrible, ugly plants back to a quasi-normal plant. We're trying Jeffrey L. Danglto find effective strains that are already adapted to the host.He says finding effective strains for individual cultivars is absolutely do-able. Thats the good news. The not so good news is that a strain that proves a game-changer in one cultivar may fall entirely flat in another cultivar. He admits its a daunting challenge. community with each other and with plants to deliver much bigger So now imagine youre a wheat farmer and you want a bio- and longer lasting benefit.logical to control fungal infection, drought or another issue. YouOne thing is certain in plant microbiome research: the future may need a particular strain for your cultivar. And its more thanis coming fast. While big unknowns currently remain, Dangl has that, because the endogenous community is different from field toconfidence that manipulating bacteria will play a rapidly increasing field. So what works in one field may fail in another under certainrole in agricultural production.conditions. When we started this lab about 15 years ago, weand I mean the research communityreally didnt know anything [about WHATS AHEAD the microbiomes interaction with plants], Dangl says. The amount At this point, science is only able to deliver single microbes thatof new, truly fundamental knowledge is incredible, and that is just interact with plants in beneficial ways. Leach says the future isgoing to increase. Were on a steep, steep upward climb in knowl-about understanding how multiple microbes work in concert andedge. FEBRUARY 2025|SEEDWORLD.COM/EUROPEISEED WORLD EUROPE I 23"