Improving Yield and Tolerance to Environmental Stress in Tomatoes by Engineering the Soil Microbiome

全球粮食生产正面临着许多挑战，如淡水短缺、可耕地面积减少以及全球变暖带来的极端天气事件更加频繁。通过将西红柿等蔬菜的生产从田地转移到环境条件可控的温室，可以缓解其中的一些挑战。然而，当在温室中种植时，西红柿通常会受到极端温度和湿度造成的环境压力，从而导致植物生长和总体产量下降。这项研究的重点是使在温室中种植的西红柿能够更好地耐受环境压力，从而提高产量。为此，将采用一种新出现的方法，该方法以植物与生活在其上和内部的自然发生的微生物之间的相互作用为中心，称为植物“微生物组”。与人类肠道微生物群的益生菌补充剂类似，将特定微生物引入植物微生物群，被称为“生物接种剂”，已被证明可以提高植物的生长速度并增加对环境胁迫的耐受性。然而，这些研究只是在高度控制的条件下进行的，尚不清楚在商业温室条件下是否会产生同样的效益。考虑到这一点，该项目旨在确定是否可以通过引入最近由INRS-CAFSB的耶高实验室分离的13种微生物物种来改善商业温室条件下种植的西红柿对环境胁迫和植物生长的耐受性，根据我们的初步数据，这些微生物物种可以改善小麦幼苗的生长。此外，这些微生物如何能够在植物中诱导这些改进将被研究。这些实验将在我们的工业合作伙伴——液体肥料的主要供应商——阿克斯特农业科学公司提供的试点温室内进行。最有希望的微生物将由我们的工业合作伙伴开发成商业产品，并在全国范围内分发给加拿大番茄种植者使用。

Global food production is facing a number of challenges such as freshwater scarcity, shrinking arable land, and more frequent extreme weather events brought on by global warming. Some of these challenges could be alleviated by moving production of vegetables, such as tomatoes, from the field into greenhouses where environmental conditions can be controlled. However, when grown in greenhouses, tomatoes commonly suffer environmental stresses caused by temperature and humidity extremes, which lead to reduced plant growth and overall yields. The focus of this research is to enable tomatoes grown in greenhouses to better tolerate environmental stresses, and in doing so improve yields. To do so a newly emerging approach will be utilized that is centered on the interactions between plants and the naturally occurring microorganisms living on and within them, referred to as the plant "microbiome". Similar to probiotic supplement for the gut microbiome in humans, introducing specific microbes to the plant microbiome, known as a "bioinoculant", has been shown to improve plant growth rates and increase tolerance to environmental stresses. However, such studies have only been done under highly controlled conditions, and it is unknown if the same benefits would occur under commercial greenhouse conditions. With this in mind, this project seeks to determine if tolerance to environmental stresses and plant growth can be improved in tomatoes grown in commercial greenhouse conditions by introducing 13 microbial species recently isolated by the Yergeau lab at INRS-CAFSB, which, based on our preliminary data can improve growth in wheat seedlings. In addition, how these microbes are able to induce these improvements in plants will be investigated. These experiments will be performed within a pilot greenhouse provided by our industrial partner, Axter Agroscience Inc., a leading supplier of liquid fertilizers. The microbes that show the most promise will then be developed into commercial products by our industrial partner and distributed nationwide for use by Canadian tomato growers.