Context and challenges

All living plants interact with endophytic micro-organisms that live inside plant tissues without causing any symptoms in the plant. Colonisation by a microbiota can offer significant advantages to host plants by producing a variety of metabolites which favour plant growth, improve the acquisition of water and nutrients, improve resistance to abiotic and biotic stress and offer protection against plant pathogens, insects and herbivores. As a result, endophytic microbiotas can affect several aspects of the physiology, metabolism and ecological interactions of plants, and thus play an important role in the plant phenotype. These microbiota can be transmitted both horizontally (acquired from the environment) and vertically (acquired directly from the parent through seeds). The endophytes carried by seeds are therefore particularly important because they are transmitted vertically through successive generations of plants (microbial fluxes), thus supplying valuable endosymbionts to the next generation of seeds. However, the relative importance of the horizontal and vertical transmission of microbial endophytes is not yet clear.

Goals

The main goal of HOLOBROM is to understand that part of the microbial community which is inherited from the parent plant via seeds, the degree to which microbial fluxes are influenced by local environmental conditions and how these micro-organisms regulate the germination and emergence of plantlets.

INRAE partners

Non INRAE partners