Synthetic Microbial Community (SynCom) for Sustainable Agriculture

Agricultural sustainability is possible only when reducing crops’ dependency on chemical fertilizers, improving crops’ ability to grow on marginal soil types, and improving their resilience against biotic and abiotic stresses. Though bio inoculants play a crucial role in agricultural sustainability, they are still limited due to low reproducibility in fields due to different crops and cultivars, soil types, and agro-ecological conditions. Traditionally, inoculants are developed through a single isolate study model, i.e., in vitro screening of strains for plant-growth promotion, omitting their interaction with the host plant and soil ecosystem. Hence, a paradigm shift is needed in developing the inoculant to improve the microbe-mediated crop fitness and productivity. In this paper, we framework the synthetic microbial community (SynCom) as a potential resource for developing ecology-based inoculants to augment nutrient acquisition, drought mitigation, and pathogen resistance of crops to ensure sustainability.