Wild ancestors of agricultural crops may help them cope with global warming

Today’s agricultural crops come from the domestication of wild plants, called wild progenitors. For example, corn comes from teosinte, a plant that grows in natural ecosystems in Mexico. The domestication of plants, which began more than 10,000 years ago, sought to modify wild progenitors through a process of artificial selection for use in agriculture.

A study involving the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has shown that wild progenitors modify the microbiome of the soil in which they live, favouring numerous ecosystem functions, such as soil fertility or carbon storage. The results of the work can help improve the health of modern crops and reduce the use of fertilizers.

The influence of the rhizosphere (the soil zone that is in direct contact with plant roots) of wild progenitors on the soil microbiome (the community of microorganisms that colonize it) and on ecosystem function remains virtually unknown despite its importance for developing microbiome-oriented tools in sustainable agriculture.

“In our work we have quantified the influence of the rhizosphere on the communities of bacteria, fungi, protists and invertebrates and on the multifunctionality of the soil through the investigation of nine wild progenitors of modern crops relevant to the world’s food supply: rice, corn, wheat, barley, common bean, soybean, potato, sunflower and cotton,” explains Miguel de Celis, a scientist at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences (ICA, CSIC) and first author of the study.

In collaboration with research groups from China, India, Israel, Iran, Mexico, the United States, Chile and Spain, rhizosphere samples were collected from the natural populations of the selected wild parents for subsequent analysis in the laboratory.

Using massive sequencing techniques and computational biology, the relationship between communities of fungi, bacteria, protists and invertebrates and the multifunctionality of the soil has been evaluated. This has made it possible to establish a reference with which to compare the evolution of the microbiome associated with current crops.

Wheat field. (Photo: Chris Cain / USFWS)

“The study of plant-soil interactions and ecosystem function along environmental gradients is important to develop products that improve sustainable agricultural production in a context of climate change. For this reason, this work serves as a starting point for the search for microbial inoculants capable of increasing crop resilience to climate change,” says Pablo García, ICA researcher and coordinator of the study.

The study is titled “The abundant fraction of soil microbiomes regulates rhizosphere function in crop wild progenitors”. It has been published in the academic journal Ecology Letters. (Source: CSIC)