Meeting Proposal: Microbiomes for Sustainable Agriculture; Asilomar, CA - Summer, 2015

这次研讨会将汇集国际科学家小组，以综合研究知识，并确定植物与相关微生物之间相互作用的研究重点。植物从微生物中获得各种好处，包括营养获取和效率、抗病和抗逆性。然而，所研究的微生物只占与植物相关的多样性的一小部分。现在，新的分子和计算工具使对与植物相关的微生物群进行全面的、基于调查的研究成为现实。提高我们对微生物群的理解，并针对驯化的作物优化它们，预计将极大地增强农业系统的可持续性。为了确保会议成果得到广泛应用，它将包括来自美国、欧洲、非洲、亚洲和南美洲的科学家，以及非营利组织和政府组织的代表。面对气候变化和人口增长带来的挑战，拟议会议的动机是在我们对与植物相关的微生物群对农业生产力和可持续性的潜在贡献的理解方面取得快速进展。在各种相关领域的主要专家之间举行一次有重点的会议，将特别有效地启动合作，加速了解和利用与植物相关的微生物群的研究。拟议会议的目标是：(I)综合作物植物育种和作物微生物群方面的知识和相关技术的现状；(Ii)确定这些领域的关键研究需求，设定研究目标，并确定新的合作；(Iii)发起出版物，就未来的研究目标和优先事项交流已达成的共识，并制定新的合作研究项目。

This workshop will bring together and international group of scientists to synthesize research knowledge and identify research priorities about the interactions between plants and their associated microbes. Plants obtain a variety of benefits from microbes, including nutrient acquisition and efficiency, disease resistance, and stress tolerance. However, the microbes studied constitute a miniscule fraction of the diversity associated with plants. New molecular and computational tools now make it practical to conduct comprehensive, inquiry-based studies of plant-associated microbiomes. Improving our understanding of microbiomes and optimizing them for domesticated crop plants is expected to greatly enhance sustainability in agricultural systems. To ensure that the outcomes of the meeting will be broadly used, it will include scientists from the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America, and representatives of non-profit and governmental organizations. In the face of challenges posed by climate change and population growth, the motivation for the proposed meeting is to make rapid progress in our understanding of the potential contribution of plant-associated microbiomes to agricultural productivity and sustainability. A focused meeting among leading experts in a variety of related fields will be uniquely effective in initiating collaborations that accelerate research on understanding and utilizing plant-associated microbiomes. The objectives of the proposed meeting are: (i) synthesize the current state of knowledge, and associated technologies, in crop plant breeding and crop plant microbiomes; (ii) identify critical research needs in these areas, set research goals, and identify new collaborations; (iii) initiate publications to communicate the developed consensus around future research objectives and priorities and develop new collaborative research projects.