Can dispersal be leveraged to improve microbial inoculant success?

King, William L. and Bell, Terrence H. (2022) Can dispersal be leveraged to improve microbial inoculant success? Trends in Biotechnology, 40 (1), 12-21. (doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2021.04.008).

Record type: Review

Abstract

Microorganisms have long been isolated from soils to develop microbial inoculants, with the goal of spiking them into new soils to augment target functions. However, establishment can be sporadic, and we assume that inoculants simply arrive at their destination. Here, we posit a need for integrating dispersal into inoculant development and deployment. We argue that consideration for an inoculant's dispersal ability, whether via active (e.g., chemotaxis) or passive (e.g., attachment to other organisms) means, and including methods of deployment that allow multiple establishment attempts could help increase the predictability of inoculant success. Dispersal can influence many key aspects of in-field survival, including the ability to escape stressors, seek favorable colonization sites, facilitate multiple establishment attempts, and engage in multikingdom interactions.

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Published date: 7 May 2022

Additional Information: Funding Information: This research was supported by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Hatch Appropriations under Project PEN04651 and Accession 1016233 , as well as grant 2019-51106-30196 from the USDA Organic Transitions Program . We thank Sarah J. Iwanoczko for her assistance with the figure. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Keywords: agriculture, dispersal, hitchhiking, microbial function, motility, persistence