Quantitative partition of the rhizosphere microbiota assembly processes

Abstract

The soil microbial reservoir and plant recruitment are predominant forces determining microbiota assembly in rhizosphere (i.e. active and passive processes respectively), but to date, no straightforward method to evaluate the respective contribution of forces to the rhizospheric microbiota assembly rules is available. We propose herein a promising way to quantitatively partition the assembling forces of rhizosphere microbiota using ordination metrics. We anticipate that this new method can not only weight the plants individual contributions to microbiota assembly in rhizosphere, but can also indirectly provide a way to quantitatively evaluate soil health by the contribution from plant selection.