Iowa State University (ISU) Professor Gwyn Beattie said this week that a sharper focus on the billions of microscopic organisms that colonize plants and often share a symbiotic relationship with them could greatly improve yields and lessen the need for costly fertilizers and pesticides. Beattie, a professor of plant pathology, was part of a 21-member team organized by the American Academy of Microbiology to come up with a set of recommendations on how advances in microbiology can improve agriculture. The recommendations set a goal of increasing yields by 20 percent over the next 20 years by enhancing the use of microbes while reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers by 20 percent.

Beattie said "There are billions of different microbes and we didn't have the tools to tell one from another. Now we can profile them based on sequencing." Most of the microbes in question are fungi, viruses or bacteria and when crops are optimized with the right genetics and colonized by the right microbes, both organisms can flourish. She cites mycorrhiza as an example. It is a fungus capable of forming an association with majority of land plants. When that happens, that symbiotic relationship helps to expand uptake by the plant's root system by as much as 90 percent, helping the plant soak up water and nutrients from much deeper in the soil. The association also helps activate genes and physiological changes in the plant to help them survive drought conditions, Beattie said. Other microbes can boost a plant's resistance to pests.

For more details about this research, read the ISU news release available at: http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2013/09/06/plantmicrobes.