Tools for innovative organic breeding arise from rhizosphere microbial ecology

Research on soil microbial ecology is beginning to elucidate how and how much beneficial soil micro-organisms (i.e. plant-probiotics) contribute to plant integrity and plant environmental fitness. The differences so far highlighted among crop varieties show highly positive interactions with plant-probiotic microflora (PPM), and upgrade the role of soil PPM at the level of other essential factors for sustainable plant breeding. Current research efforts, aimed to rapidly achieve crop varieties fitting for low-input and organic production systems, finally take into account the capacity of each individual variety to efficiently exploit indigenous PPM.