Unraveling Rhizosphere Communication: Characterization of Root Exudation for Bacterial Microbiome Recruitment across Species and Environments

Abstract

The root-associated soil, the rhizosphere, is a hotspot of microbial activity, as plants release a variety of compounds, termed root exudates, into this region. Thus, revealing the dynamics of root exudation and how this shapes presence of microbes associated with plant tissues will allow the continue development of sustainable technologies to further increase crop yields in a more targeted manner.We summarized the current knowledge of factors altering root exudation in two reviews presented. We describe a core metabolome shared between roots and exudates of the three species potentially recruiting the core microbiome and expanded with ten and microbiome analysis. Distinct exudates correlated with presence of specific bacteria, making first steps towards resolving plant-microbe interactions on a molecular level. The results provide insight on the overall importance of species and environmental variation on plant microbe interactions, specifically how root exudation shapes bacterial community composition. This is a first step towards understanding the molecular network of microbiome recruitment in the changing agricultural environments for more suitable and sustainable practices without losing crop yield.