Author Spotlight: Developing Synthetic Microbial Communities for Generating Second-Generation Biofertilizers

In our research, we focus on rhizosphere bacteria and biofertilizers, and we aim to develop a synthetic bacterial communities that will be used as second-generation biofertilizers. The focus of our research on rhizosphere bacteria has shift from single-strain to community-level. However, there is no standard methods for building synthetic bacterial communities.

Currently, there is still uncertainty regarding the compatibility and colonization ability of synthetic bacterial communities predicted by microbiome analysis. Thus, it is also a major bottleneck in the development of second-generation biofertilizers. Compared to large sequencing data of conventional methods, our culture first, identify later approach greatly reduces the amount of work involved in 60S rRNA gene sequencing.

It is cost-effective to create synthetic bacterial communities that colonize roots quickly and efficiently. Our future research will focus on biological function of bacterial communities based on multispecies biofilms, and we will pay particular attention to promoting plant growth, improve plant stress resistance, and protecting plant health.