THE CARBON COST OF A HEALTHY ROOT MICROBIOME UNDER ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS

In line with NIFA AFRI's Crosscutting Program Area, we leverage MSU's unique combination of interdisciplinary strengths in plant physiological responses to stress, metabolomics, genomics and transcriptomics to answer a foundational question: How is the 'C cost' managed under environmental stress? Our two objectives are to evaluate how environmental stress influences 1) the C cost or plant investment of C into root exudates (i.e. proportion of plant C allocated to root exudates vs growth and respiration), and 2) the root exudate composition and cascading impacts on root microbiome composition and potential function.