Steering soil microbiome to enhance soil system resilience

Pathogens in soil play a tremendous role in soil health and subsequent food production. Soil-borne pathogens can cause serious losses to global harvest and are considered as a difficult problem to manage worldwide. The emergence of soil disease is largely dependent on the pathogen-host-environment complex, which can be employed to generate pathogen control strategies. Usually, the resources of resistant plant varieties are limited, and chemical control is insufficiently effective with possible secondary soil pollution. Therefore, there is now a compulsory need to enhance the ability of soil per se to defend against invading pathogens (i.e. soil immunity). Soil immunity is normally attributed to the activities of the functional microbiome. In the meanwhile, pathogen-microbiome interactions in soil are sensitive to soil contaminants which would filter out unique groups of microbial communities. Steering functional soil microbiome will not only limit disease development, but also reduce the level of soil pollution. It is thus of great importance to develop microbiome-based techniques to improve soil immunity and resilience. This review provided an up-to-date understanding of the mechanisms for microbiome-based disease suppression and potential management strategies for better sustainable agricultural system.