Harnessing Plant Microbiomes for Climate Resilience: From Ecological Insight to Synthetic Community Design

Plant Microbiome research explores the intricate relationships between plants and their associated microbial communities across multiple tissues and developmental stages. In the context of escalating climate change, understanding the plant holobiont—comprising the host and its root, shoot, and internal microbiomes—has gained urgency, as these partnerships play a pivotal role in nutrient cycling, growth, immunity, and stress tolerance. Despite these advances, the field grapples with challenges in discerning causal microbial functions and translating descriptive findings into generalizable and predictive models. Recent studies leveraging multi-omics, innovative cultivation, and experimental systems have begun to clarify the complex ecological principles underlying microbiome assembly, highlighting both the disruptive impact of climate extremes on community dynamics and the tantalizing potential to harness beneficial microbes for mitigating stress. However, there remains a significant gap in integrating ecological discovery with experimental validation and applied microbiome engineering, impeding progress toward actionable solutions for sustainable agriculture.This Research Topic aims to advance the science and application of plant microbiomes by connecting ecological understanding with mechanistic testing and rational synthetic community design. Central research questions include: How can microbiome features that enhance climate resilience be reliably identified across plant compartments and stress scenarios? What principles govern the robustness, succession, and sustainability of beneficial communities under changing environmental conditions? How can the translation of experimental findings inform the engineering and benchmarking of effective, reproducible, and field-relevant microbial consortia? By fostering studies that bridge pattern and process, this initiative seeks to unravel the biological underpinnings of plant-microbe adaptation and support the development of microbiome-based strategies for climate-resilient agriculture.The scope of this Research Topic encompasses fundamental discovery to translational application, but focuses on studies that move beyond descriptive surveys to functional, mechanistic, and engineering-based approaches. Relevant submissions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Microbiome features and taxa linked to stress resilience in different plant compartments• Ecological processes driving microbiome assembly, succession, and stability amid environmental change• Functional validation of key microbial genes, metabolites, and interactions using experimental systems• Methodologies and design strategies for constructing and benchmarking synthetic microbial communities• Mechanisms underlying practical durability of engineered communities, including priority effects and host feedback• Reproducible workflows and measurable endpoints for field translation and sustainable agricultural impactWe invite Original Research, Methods, Reviews/Mini-Reviews, and Perspectives, and encourage contributions that draw clear connections between microbiome discovery, mechanistic insight, and the pathway to agricultural implementation. Topic editors: Ramon Santos Bermudez, Orlando Borras-Hidalgo Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78917/harnessing-plant-microbiomes-for-climate-resilience-from-ecological-insight-to-synthetic-community-design