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

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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.