2026/01/15 by Anna-Katharina Garrell, Simina Vintila, Henry Phillip +2 · 1 voice
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Plant nutrient uptake and metabolism #Plant tissue culture and regeneration #Plant-Microbe Interactions and Immunity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1094/pbiomes-07-25-0053-sc
openalex publication_date 2026/01/15 · openalex created_date 2026/01/16 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Plant-associated microbiota play a critical role in host resilience to both abiotic and biotic stresses. However, understanding the underlying mechanisms of interaction within these communities, as well as between these communities and their hosts, remains challenging because of the complexity and dynamic nature of plant-associated microbiota. Synthetic microbial communities can serve as experimentally tractable models to establish a fundamental understanding of plant–microbiota interactions. Here, we report the development of a defined minimal growth medium for a well-characterized seven-member maize root synthetic microbial community. The medium is based on a standard plant-growth medium, Murashige and Skoog, to enable its use for both in vitro and in planta studies. Using genome-scale metabolic modeling and auxotrophy prediction, we identified amino acid and vitamin requirements of each of the seven species and, based on these predictions, added arginine; proline; serine; asparagine; leucine; isoleucine; lysine; cysteine; glutamine; and vitamins B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, and B12 to support bacterial growth. This minimal medium enables controlled investigation of microbial physiology, metabolite exchange, and community interactions, and lays the foundation for scalable in vitro and in planta experiments, facilitating future research on plant microbiome functions. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .