Plant-Associated Microbiomes Under Combined Stresses: Insights on Pathogen Interactions and Environmental Factors

Dear Colleagues,

Accurate identification of plant pathogens is crucial for the early detection of plant diseases by using rapid and sensitive detection methods such as colloidal gold test strips and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assays. However, increasing evidence suggests that mixed infections caused by multiple pathogens coexistent within a single host is common in natural and agricultural ecosystems, which complicate early detection, prevention strategies, disease management, and epidemiological tracking. This shift has moved the focus from the traditional ‘one pathogen, one disease’ paradigm to a pathobiome paradigm pathology, which recognizes the role of complex microbial interactions in disease outcomes.

Plant microbiome, including beneficial, neutral and pathogenic microorganisms across the rhizosphere, phyllosphere and endosphere, plays a pivotal role in plant health, growth, and resilience. The plant microbiome changes according to developmental stages, genotypes, and environmental factors. Moreover, certain microbial communities induce specific systemic changes in plant root exudation to obtain required nourishment, in return plant root exudation recruit specific microbial taxa to adapt to environmental stress. The advent of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies has revolutionized our ability to analyze plant-associated microbial communities, even under complex conditions such as mixed infections. HTS enables the identification of all microbial taxa present in a single sample, helping researchers understand pathogen coexistence, microbial shifts during disease progression, and microbial candidates for disease suppression or biocontrol.

For this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of original research, reviews, mini review, opinion, methods, and perspective articles. Subjects of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Identification and characterization of co-infecting pathogens using polyphasic or omics approaches.
• Spatiotemporal shifts in plant microbiomes in response to pathogen infection, environmental stress or developmental stage.
• Development and application of advanced diagnostic tools for detecting complex or mixed infections.
• Role of antagonistic microbes, microbial competition, or plant-mediated microbiome reassembly in disease suppression.
• Development and functional analysis of synthetic microbial consortia to improve plant resistance under mixed stress conditions.

Dr. Jianwei Guo 
Prof. Dr. Xiaolin Wang
Prof. Dr. Yu Shi
Guest Editors

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