Functional Genomics of Crop-Microbe Interactions

Dear Colleagues,

Crop plants are constantly being surrounded by different types of microorganisms existing in neighboring environments, including the beneficial microbes and phytopathogens. It has been widely accepted that while phytopathogens attack the crop plants leading to their yield and quality reduction, beneficial microbes form microbiota conferring fitness advantages to host crops, including benefiting growth and enhancing defense against diverse environmental stresses. In recent years, much progress had been made in understanding crop-pathogens interactions, such as the decoding of both crops’ and microbial genomics, the cloning and validation of important genes responsible for defending crops from invasion by pathogens, and the dissection of molecular mechanisms underlying the immune response deployed by crop species. Meanwhile, the interactions between crops and beneficial microorganisms are also increasingly gaining extensive attentions from the research community, for instance, the assembly and community of microbiota associated with crops, the genetic impacts of host crops on the composition and functional diversity of microbiota (e.g., rhizospheric and endophytic), as well as the application of SynCom (synthetic microbial communities) in the improvement of crop performance. In this Special Issue, we aim to publish high-quality research articles and reviews related to all aspects of the functional genomics of crop-microbe interactions, including but not limited to, the integrative omics (megagenomics, comparative genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics) to study the interactions between crop plants and microorganisms (beneficial ones or pathogens), and the identification and validation of important genes and their products from both hosts and microbes (strains, proteins, small molecules and other types of metabolites) with great potentials in the enhancement of crop fitness advantages or microbial functions. The new theories and technologies related to crop-microbe interactions are also within the scope of this issue.

Prof. Dr. Xiquan Gao
Dr. Dayong Zhang
Guest Editors

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• crops
• beneficial microorganisms
• functional genomics
• integrative omics
• microbiota
• metagenomics
• phytopathogens