Next generation tools for crop-microbiome manipulation to mitigate the impact of climate change

The world is on track to reach average temperatures of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels in the next two decades, which is sooner than previously expected. Global temperatures have risen by around 1.0 C to date, increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events worldwide (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—IPCC, 2021). Prolonged drought, frequent flooding, and severe heatwaves are expected to negatively impact agricultural productivity and, hence, threaten food security and social stability (Mbow et al., 2019). Feeding the ever-increasing human population under a rapidly changing climate with shrinking available arable lands is a grand challenge with no effective solution available. Therefore, there is an urgent necessity to develop approaches that can mitigate the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity. It is likely that multiple approaches working simultaneously in an integrated way will be needed to address this challenge. Recently, it has been proposed that harnessing the functions provided by the plantassociated microbiomes can potentially provide one of the most effective ways to mitigate the impact of climate change on crop productivity in the short- to medium-term (Trivedi et al., 2022).