Collaborative Research: URoL:ASC: Microbiome-mediated plant genetic resistance for enhanced agricultural sustainability

农业植物生产为人类提供了一些最基本的需求，包括食物，纤维和住所。然而，传统的农业做法对生态系统造成破坏，并削弱其能力。与气候变化相关的病原体压力和干旱压力增加，使作物产量减少，从而加剧了这一挑战。已经提出了育种植物以从环境中招募有益微生物来赋予抗病性和胁迫耐受性，但研究界缺乏协调的努力来开发和批判性地评估这种方法。该URoL项目将开发和研究作物品种，通过组装微生物群落来增强农业可持续性，增强对当前和紧急生物和非生物胁迫的抵抗力。这项研究将在三种广泛种植的作物中进行：小麦、番茄和白杨。新的知识和遗传物质将被广泛分享，以使世界各地的育种计划和生产者能够迅速采用。在小麦的重点研究中，与俄勒冈州的部落和非部落小麦农民合作，将促进知识的共同生产，并在农村小麦种植社区建立能力。该教育计划将为本科生和研究生以及博士后学者提供就业和培训。与传统大学和蓝山社区学院的合作伙伴关系将有助于从传统上代表性不足的STEM群体中招募学生参加我们的本科暑期课程。与俄勒冈州科学与工业博物馆合作的一项推广计划旨在通过在博物馆、图书馆和县集市上的实践活动来提高公众对农业中植物微生物组的理解。一个新兴的生命规则是植物遗传变异塑造了其微生物组的组装。微生物组反过来影响关键的植物功能。URoL的这个项目试图通过培育植物来招募赋予抗病性和耐旱性的微生物群落，从而理解并将这些规则应用于农业。第一个目标是确定微生物组介导的对当前和新出现的主要生物和非生物胁迫的遗传抗性的遗传靶标。通过测试不同的物种-一年生草（小麦），一年生双子叶植物（番茄）和多年生双子叶植物（白杨）-该项目将调查病原微生物，有益微生物和宿主基因型之间关系的规则。总体假设是，宿主基因型在作物中选择疾病抑制微生物，尽管特定的分子，生理和生态机制在系统中可能不同。第二个目标将测试影响特定病原体的遗传目标是否与对其他病原体和干旱胁迫的抗性有关。总之，这项工作将导致小麦，番茄和白杨品种的发展，表达微生物组介导的遗传抗性，以重要的生物和生物胁迫。总的来说，URoL项目的贡献将是广泛的，跨越植物育种和遗传学，基因组学，植物病理学，微生物学，微生物群落生态学和跨学科科学。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Agricultural plant production provides humans with some of our most basic needs including food, fiber and shelter. Yet conventional agricultural practices cause damage to ecosystems and undermine their capacity. Greater pathogen pressure and drought stress associated with climate change add to this challenge by reducing crop yields. Breeding plants to recruit beneficial microbes from the environment conferring disease resistance and stress tolerance has been proposed, but the research community has lacked a coordinated effort to develop and critically evaluate this approach. This URoL project will develop and study crop varieties that enhance agricultural sustainability by assembling microbial communities that enhance resistance to major current and emergent biotic and abiotic stresses. The research will be conducted in three widely grown crops: wheat, tomato, and poplar. New knowledge and genetic material will be widely shared to enable rapid adoption by breeding programs and producers around the world. In focal studies of wheat, collaboration with tribal and non-tribal wheat farmers in Oregon will foster the co-production of knowledge and build capacity in rural wheat farming communities. The education program will provide employment and training to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars. Partnerships with Heritage University and Blue Mountain Community College will help to recruit students from traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM to our undergraduate summer program. An outreach program coordinated with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry seeks to improve the public understanding of plant microbiomes in agriculture through hands-on activities in museums, libraries, and county fairs.An emerging rule of life is that plant genetic variation shapes the assembly of its microbiome. The microbiome in turn affects critical plant functions. This URoL project seeks to understand and apply these rules to agriculture by breeding plants to recruit microbial communities conferring disease resistance and drought tolerance. The first aim is to identify genetic targets underlying microbiome-mediated genetic resistance to major current and emergent biotic and abiotic stresses. By testing diverse species – an annual grass (wheat), annual dicot (tomato), and a perennial dicot (poplar trees) – the project will investigate the rules governing the relationships among pathogenic microbes, beneficial microbes, and host genotypes. The overarching hypothesis is that host genotypes select for disease-suppressive microbes across crops, though specific molecular, physiological, and ecological mechanisms may differ among systems. The second aim will test whether genetic targets impacting particular pathogens are associated with resistance to additional pathogens and to drought stress. Together, this work will lead to the development of wheat, tomato, and poplar cultivars expressing microbiome-mediated genetic resistance to important biotic and biotic stresses. Overall, the contributions of this URoL project will be wide-ranging, spanning plant breeding and genetics, genomics, plant pathology, microbiology, microbial community ecology, and transdisciplinary sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.