With the continuous expanding of world population and the increasing of food demands, our farmland is now facing the unprecedented pressure, especially from soil-borne diseases and soil pollution. Soil-borne disease and soil pollution are closely related. The implementation of recalcitrant chemicals that used to control soil-borne diseases will also bring pollution into soil with an impact on human health. On the other hand, the heavy metals, radioactive elements, organic poisons and other pollutants in soil may inhibit the growth and development of plants and finally lead to the accelerating of disease dissemination. Thus, when facing complex problems in practical agricultural production system, strategies that target on solving only one of problems may not receive the desired results. The tiny microorganisms contain a huge gene bank. “Harnessing” soil microbiome to suppress soil-borne diseases and control soil pollution is a hot topic in recent years. However, few studies were carried out on solving the two parallel problems (disease and pollution) at one time by using soil microbial community.

Pointing out in this article, the functions of soil microbiome include but not limited to improve soil health, promote plant growth and ultimately accelerate the sustainable development of agriculture. Therefore, it is of great significance to develop technologies to improve soil system resilience based on soil functional microbiome. For instance, using appropriate plant hosts as the “driving motor” can recruit soil functional microbiome to colonize the rhizosphere. The functional microbiome that attracted by root exudates have capacities in controlling both disease and pollution. Additionally, the long-term controlling of disease and pollution by soil fertilizers or amendments mostly rely on the potential function of the rhizosphere microbiome that induced and enriched upon amendment application. Thus, it is suggested that integrated management strategies should be implemented to steer soil functional microbiome and maintain the resilience of soil system in an economic, safe and sustainable manner.

The first author of this paper, Dr. Likun Wang, has published a series of research papers on soil immunity in recent years. She systemically reported the effective suppression of apple replant disease through integrated use of soil biofumigation and apple rootstock genotype (Plant Disease 103: 846-852；Phytopathology 109: 1378-1391；Phytopathology 109: 607-614).

This work is financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (2018YFD0800306) and the HebeiScience Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (D2018503005).

Publication link: https://doi.org/10.1080/1040841X.2019.1700906.