Plant microbiome-based strategies for agri-environmental biotechnologies

The course aims to provide students the tools to exploit the knowledge on the beneficial interaction between plants and the associated microbiomes to develop biotechnological approaches to boost plant fitness and resilience, crop productivity in different ecosystems (agricultural soils, extreme environment) and under different conditions (biotic/abiotic stresses) and increase sustainability in agricultural practice.

At the end of the course the student will be able to: i) analyse the plant microbiome in terms of definition, microbial components and plant microbial niches (rhizosphere, endosphere, phyllosphere, seed, shoot); ii) illustrate the main ecological factors tuning the assembly and remodelling of the plant associated microbiomes in soil; iii) illustrate the main methodologies (metabolomics, metagenomics, genomics, transcriptomics, culturomics) to decipher the plant-microbiome interactions under control conditions and under biotic/abiotic stress; iv) analyse synthetic communities (SynCom) as a tool to engineer the plant microbiome to improve the plant fitness in agricultural ecosystems; v) discuss the composition, role and application of biostimulants to support sustainable practice in agriculture and for land reclamation; vi) analyse the diversity, structure, role and transmission of the seed microbiota in the light of agricultural management practice; vii) discuss the research challenges to be faced to improve plant health and productivity through the associated microbiome manipulation.