Plant-associated microbial communities are crucial for plant health and fitness, and may enhance plant tolerance to various environmental stresses. As global climate change threatens crop production and increases demands on sustainable agriculture, harnessing the plant microbiome has become one potential strategy to address these issues. Thus, it is fundamental to understand the relative contributions of both the host plant as well as the environment in shaping the plant microbiome. Moreover, the response of plant microbiomes to stress and any consequences of microbiome stress responses for the host plants are poorly understood, though this information is critical to achieve a basis of knowledge for plant microbiome engineering. My research aimed to contribute to this knowledge by investigating the factors that structure root- and seed-associated microbial communities of two valuable crops for Michigan’s agricultural economy: apple and common bean. The first chapter of my dissertation aimed to assess the biogeography of bacterial, archaeal, fungal, and nematode communities in the root zone of apple trees, and to determine their relationships with each other and their changes over natural abiotic gradients across orchards. I also assessed the influence of plant cultivar on microbiome structure in the root zone. I found that root zone microbiome community structure was strongly affected by geographic location and edaphic properties of soil. The next chapter of my dissertation investigated the variability of seed endophyte community of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.). My results showed that plant-to-plant variability under controlled growth conditions exceeded within-plant variability among seeds from different pods. My study developed protocols and added insights to the growing toolkit of approaches to understand the plant-microbiome engagements that support the health of agricultural and environmental ecosystems. The last chapter assessed the responses of common bean seed endophytes to drought stress in the field across two growing locations and four genotypes of common bean. To summarize, this work advances foundational knowledge of the seed microbiome as a critical component of the plant microbiome, and in the context of two key crops for Michigan agriculture.
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