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Anna Marija Helt reports that, as global warming challenges tradtional agriculture, scientists are looking to “probiotics” for crops as a new green revolution in agriculture…

Potatoes contain something about which most people are entirely unaware: endophytes, which means “within plants.” Endophytes can also be found in other vegetables, fruits, and grains. In fact, all plants harbor endophytes in the form of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes.

Endophytes eat plant-derived nutrients but typically don’t cause disease. Instead, they bolster plant growth, disease resistance, antioxidant status, or tolerance to stressors such as drought, heat, and cold. Endophytes enable plants to respond quickly to such stressors by expanding their genetic repertoire, according to a review by ecologist Christine Hawkes and colleagues. To improve crop health and sustainability, Hawkes studies how plants, their fungal residents, and such stressors interact.

Given climate-related drought and temperature extremes, declining soil quality, and a decrease in arable land, endophytes, argue Pankaj Trivedi, Chakradhar Mattupalli, Kellye Eversole, and Jan E. Leach, might undergird a sustainable “green revolution” to improve agricultural productivity while lessening reliance on environmentally damaging and health-threatening agricultural chemicals. Endophytes can have an impact, says plant biotechnologist Julissa Ek-Ramos, on “climate change, recovering the soil, and having more healthy food to eat.”…

… “It’s really amazing how strongly these endophytes can combat the fungal pathogens of crops,” [microbiologist Sharon] Doty says. And she notes regarding their growth-promoting effects, “It works in maize, in rice, in tomatoes, in bell peppers, and strawberries.” Her team has also isolated endophytes from sweet potatoes that improve the rooting of poplars, a promising biofuels crop.

Endophytes confer additional traits useful for a changing planet. For example, those from geothermal habitats can confer heat tolerance, based on studies led by geneticist Regina Redman. And crop physiologist K. M. Manasa demonstrated salt-tolerance in rice plants inoculated with an endophyte from seaside plants. Rice is salt-sensitive and one of the world’s main food crops. But increasing soil salinity is impacting a fifth of farmable land globally due to climate change and human water and land use practices…

Nitrogen is often the most limiting soil nutrient for crops, something nineteenth-century farmers recognized. Agronomist and Nobel Prize nominee Johanna Döbereiner discovered nitrogen-fixing endophytes in non-legume plants in the twentieth century that, like rhizobia, might reduce the need for financially and environmentally costly synthetic fertilizers. Many of the endophytes Doty has characterized over twenty-five years fix nitrogen and promote growth in lab, greenhouse, and field trials but have a much broader host range than rhizobia, extending from farm lands to forests…

… Developing real-world endophyte applications is a complicated challenge, but a necessary one given the need for more productive and sustainable agriculture. In the meantime, skeptical farmers are getting onboard.

“There’s a lot of conversations going on between researchers and farmers,” says Friesen, to “move the needle on our understanding of these processes that are so important for soil health but also plant health and the stability and security of our food supply.”…

More at “Better Farming Through Endophytes,” from @ahelt.bsky.social in @jstordaily.bsky.social.

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As we muse on microbes, we might send healthy birthday greetings to John Boyd Orr (1st Baron Boyd-Orr); he was born on this date in 1880. A teacher, medical doctor, biologist, nutritional physiologist, politician, businessman, and farmer, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949 for his scientific research into nutrition and for his work as the first Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

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