Microbiome Acquisition

Unlike animals, plants have relatively few sources for microbiome innoculation. Human infants acquire their microbiome through the actual birthing process, ingesting food, interaction with peers, interaction with the environment (in other words putting everything in their mouths). Plants on the other hand are limited mainly one innoculation source: the soil. Another source may be from the mother plant and this is another area of interest in our lab (see the inheritance section).

Just because there is mainly one inoculation source does not mean that plants statically acquire their microbiomes. This is most likely a dynamic process - but needs investigation.

To investigate microbiome acquisition in rice plants we are using several approaches:

1) A field approach Field Experiment