Soil-Root-Microbe Interactions in the Rhizosphere: A Key to Understanding and Predicting Nutrient Bio availability to Plants

As stressed in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, over the last 50 years, human beings have modified the ecosystems to an unpreceded point in humankind history, in order to meet the increasing world demand in food, drinking water, wood, fibers and energy (Tilman 1999). Such changes much contributed to improving humankind well-being, but this was achieved at the expense of a degradation of numerous ecosystem services and increasing poverty of the poorest populations. Prediction models forecast further degradation of ecosystem services in the coming 50 years,