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SUMMARY:Microbes play a central role in a plant's solutions to ecological 
 problems - Ian Baldwin\, Max Planck Institute
DTSTART:20160107T130000Z
DTEND:20160107T140000Z
UID:TALK63117@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:38889
DESCRIPTION:Plants maintain microbial associations whose functions remain 
 largely unknown. Roots allow plants to associate with a diverse microbial 
 community of the soil\, with which they can establish mutualistic relation
 ships. The genetic characterization of the plant microbiome (total microbi
 ota of plants) has intensified\, but we still lack experimental proof of t
 he ecological function of the root microbiome. Without such an understandi
 ng\, the use of these microbiomes in sustainable agricultural practices wi
 ll be poorly informed. For the past 17 years\, we have planted the annual 
 post-fire tobacco\, Nicotiana attenuata into an experimental field plot in
  the plant’s native habitat\, and for the last 9 years\, the numbers of 
 plants dying from a sudden wilt disease has increased\, leading to a crop 
 failure in 2013\; inadvertently we had recapitulated the long-festering ag
 ricultural dilemma of pathogen buildup associated with continuous cropping
  for this native plant. This talk will describe the process by which we re
 alized that we came to realize that the microbiome that the plant recruits
  during germination provides resistance against the sudden wilt disease an
 d that a core set of 5 bacterial consortia were essential for disease redu
 ction. Consortia\, but not individual members of the root-associated bacte
 ria community which this plant normally recruits during germination from n
 ative seed banks provide enduring resistance against fungal diseases\, dem
 onstrating that native plants develop opportunistic mutualisms with prokar
 yotes that solve context-dependent ecological problems.
LOCATION:Department of Plant Sciences\, Large Lecture Theatre
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