The MGR attends BES: Microbiomes for Resilient Crops and Healthy Ecosystems Conference
By Dr Paida Mataranyika, postdoc on the MGR project and in the Bell Lab.
Dr Hester, postdoc on the MGR project and in the Waring lab
Dr Bryony Dignam, postdoc on the MGR project and in the Graystock lab
The Agricultural Ecology Special Interest Group (SIG), hosted by the British Ecological Society, organised and facilitated a two-day conference from 10-11 June to discuss topics exploring Microbiomes for Resilient Crops and Healthy Ecosystems. This multistakeholder meeting covered the roles microbiomes play within crop protection, plant growth promotion, alternative farming systems, scalable industry advancements and intellectual property. Speakers included industry leaders in bioinoculant development and production and established and early-career researchers.
The running theme over the two days was translation and scalability of microbiome research. This was presented as a challenge in most research areas, with several constraints across the field, including policy regulations and resource availability. Nevertheless, advances in research in the UK and beyond, despite these barriers, were also highlighted. Tim Mauchline from Rothamsted, for example, described large-scale soil sampling efforts across the UK that provide valuable information about the soil microbial communities. This work closely parallels the MGR sampling efforts around England. In the poster presentations, Paida Mataranyika showcased the project's collection of 2,168 soil and root samples from 84 wheat fields, demonstrating how these data are being used to characterise microbial communities associated with wheat production and fungal pathogen prevalence
The MGR project’s sampling survey has resulted in a large-scale dataset and soil collection from wheat farms in England. Through this sampling effort, we have gathered fungal and bacterial data across different soil types, farming practices, cropping histories and regions in England. This will provide us with a glimpse into the extent of fungal pathogens in wheat grown soils and their corresponding microbial communities.
The value of soil goes beyond the Agricultural sector. We all benefit from it, and it is essential that we converge all our skills and resources to preserve it. Thankfully, the answer is right under our feet. As Norman Ernest Borlaug said, “Almost certainly the first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all”, we can achieve that using microbes as our teammates. - Paida Mataranyika
The conference also highlighted several efforts to optimise soil inoculants. This included computational approaches in microbiome modelling [Dr Francesco Del Carretore (University of Liverpool)], and microbiome-induced biotic stress tolerance in apple trees [Matevz Papp-Rupar (NIAB East Malling)]. Dr Bryony Dignam (MGR postdoc) presented similar work that focuses on disease tolerance. Her work (supervised by Ass. Prof Peter Graystock and technically supported by Dr Peter Mark) described the large scale, controlled environment experiments that have emerged from the soils collected by the MGR project across England. The experiments and data analysis are ongoing, but they have already identified promising soils with fungal pathogen suppressive traits.
Dr Hester van Schalkwyk (MGR postdoc) presented a poster about her bioinoculant-focused research. This work invoked great interest from industry stakeholders attending the conference. Bionema CEO, Minshad Ansari, and CroBio senior scientist, Henry Birt, gave insights into microbial isolates that have been developed and scaled into commercial products. The MGR project and Dr Van Schalkwyk’s work (supervised by project lead Prof. Bonnie Waring and supported by technician Georgios Papaioannou) hopes to better understand the application of inoculants in field trials. This work has the potential for large-scale application, reducing the reliance on environmentally and economically taxing fungicides.
“Microbiome-based solutions for managing agricultural pathogens hold enormous potential to transform sustainable crop protection, but significant challenges remain before they can be widely adopted in the field. The conference provided an excellent opportunity to reflect on the shared challenges facing the sector, while also showcasing exciting advances in microbiome research and commercialisation. It was encouraging to see the progress being made and to gain a clearer understanding of where future research and collaboration are most needed.”-Hester van Schalkwyk
Overall, the conference was a convergence of important players in the research and translation of microbiomes in agriculture. However, farmers and industry practitioners were noticeably absent. These partners are essential for the translation and adoption of Microbiomes for Resilient Crops and Healthy Ecosystems in the UK and across the rest of the world.
We sincerely thank the Michael Uren Foundation for their generous support in advancing this pioneering research programme.