Microbial Root Symbionts in Plant Production – Getting to the Bottom

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Agronomy in the section Farming Sustainability. We seek contributions that report context-dependent, below-ground plant–microbe–soil interactions with effects on plant production and symbiotic association and functioning. Particularly welcome are reports of findings from manipulative experiments under close to field conditions, or field surveys with a clear study, sampling, and analytical design, addressing research questions targeted towards mechanistic and putatively causative relationships. Effects on crop plant performance and the agronomic and ecological significance and possible application value should at least be discussed based on existing literature to the topic. Multifactorial experiments and perspectives demonstrating and/or discussing context-dependencies are particularly welcome. Thorough (opinion) reviews with clear messages and offering new conceptual perspectives are considered as well.

The microbial plant symbionts can be mutualists, commensals, parasites, or mixed populations, and combinations of those. Particularly appreciated are reports on the changing symbiotic relationships with the age of the crop and symbiosis, or when growth conditions change.

All contributions must report microbe–crop interactions and address testable mechanistically justified predictions, based on soil biogeochemical, biophysical, or ecophysiological processes. The agronomic study framework and study system must be described to make it possible to understand the agroecological significance of the reported findings. Exceptions may be made, if findings from model systems and from testing ecological theory are interpreted and related to sustainable crop production and plant–microbe–soil management.

We ask the authors to provide sufficient contextual information in the Introduction and Materials and Methods sections to be able to fully appreciate the meaning of reported findings. We encourage interpretation and a critical discussion of study outcomes as to their actual meaning for production (negative, neutral, positive, or variable) under standard agricultural practices or any microbe-conscious cultivation method.

There are no exclusion criteria with respect to employed analytical approaches if those are sound and justified—no matter whether classical or modern. Reciprocally supportive evidence from different analyses is appreciated.

If you are fed up with twisting findings to fit a certain mindset and can share your message based on thorough arguments and sound data and analyses, this Special Issue of Agronomy is just the right place to make your argument and evidence public.

Dr. Hannes A. Gamper
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• direct and indirect plant-microbe-soil interactions
• microbe-microbe and microbe-plant competition or facilitation
• microbial support and control systems
• root and soil health and functioning
• plant-microbe-soil feedback
• biotic soil legacy
• microbial community (re-)assembly
• priority effects
• (co-)dispersal
• ecological drift
• ecological divergence
• biotic homogenisation
• eco-evolutionary mismatch
• symbiotic association
• biological control
• root-associated microbes
• mycorrhizal fungi
• rhizobia
• endophytes
• parasites