Improving rice drought tolerance through host-mediated microbiome selection
Authors: Styer, A., Pettinga, D., Caddell, D. F., Coleman-Derr, D.
Date: 2025-09-18 · Version: 2
DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.03.578672 Category: Plant Biology
Model Organism: Oryza sativa
▶ AI Summary
The study used host-mediated artificial selection to iteratively enrich rice-associated microbiomes that improve growth and drought tolerance, starting from diverse soil microbial communities. Over multiple generations, selected microbiomes converged, and amplicon sequencing along with metagenome-assembled genomes identified specific bacterial taxa and functional pathways (e.g., glycerol-3-phosphate and iron transport) linked to enhanced drought performance. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of plant phenotype-driven microbiome engineering for crop improvement.
host-mediated selection drought tolerance microbiome engineering amplicon sequencing metagenome-assembled genomes