Study of the transmission of the seed microbiota and its impact on the phenotype of young plants

Obtaining a clearer understanding of the dynamics and influence of this microbiota during crop establishment would be particularly valuable because the seed industry is preparing itself for a major revolution regarding the treatment of seeds combined with a reduction in synthetic pesticide use.  In this context, this PhD project proposes to use synthetic ecology approaches in a controlled manner to study the dynamics of a microbiota with a known composition (synthetic community) and its impact on the host phenotype. In particular, the first part of this project will focus on studying transmission of the microbiota from seed to plantlet, in order to determine which fraction actually constitutes the “primary inoculum” of the plant. The second part will evaluate the effects of this microbiota on different plant traits using high-throughput phenotyping by digital imaging, and on characterising the metabolome of the plantlet. Finally, we shall try to identify the strains/consortia and microbial functions involved in modifying the phenotype of the plantlet by means of targeted reconstructions of synthetic communities and comparative genomics.