Biological and experimental factors that define the effectiveness of microbial inoculation on plant traits: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Bacterial and fungal microbiomes associated with plants can significantly affect the host’s phenotype. Inoculating plants with one or multiple bacterial and fungal species can affect specific plant traits, which is exploited in attempts to increase plant performance and stress tolerance by microbiome engineering. Currently, we lack a comprehensive synthesis on the generality of these effects related to different biological (e.g., plant models, plant traits, and microbial taxa) and experimental factors. In a meta-analysis, we showed that the plant trait under consideration and the microbial taxa used to inoculate plants significantly influenced the strength of the effect size. In a methodological context, experiments under sterilized conditions and short-term periods resulted in larger positive effects on plant traits than those of unsterilized and long-term experiments. We recommend that future studies should not only consider (short-term) lab experiments with sterilized plants and single inoculants but also and more often (long-term) field or greenhouse experiments with naturally occurring microbial communities associated with the plants and inoculated consortia including both bacteria and fungi.