Background

Crop yields under reduced synthetic-input regimes depend not only on soil chemistry but on the plant–microbe community a given host genotype is able to recruit and sustain. Yet variety-development pipelines still optimise hosts and inoculants as separate problems. Field outcomes diverge from greenhouse predictions because the host genotype and the resident microbiome were never designed to work together.

Objective

Rhizosphere Genotype Match (RGM) builds a predictive matching framework that pairs cereal and legume cultivars with the soil microbial communities most likely to support them. We combine multi-site field metagenomics, host-genotype-aware sampling, and gnotobiotic validation to learn which host–community pairings actually succeed.

Aims

• Build a strain library of phosphate-mobilising and nitrogen-fixing isolates from boreal agricultural soils, annotated for host preference and stress tolerance.
• Develop a host–community matching model that predicts inoculant persistence and yield benefit from host genotype, soil chemistry, and microbial trait profiles.
• Validate predictions in multi-site field trials with cereal and forage-legume cultivars under reduced synthetic input.

RGM is a partnership with regional cereal growers and with partner breeding programmes. The output is a reusable framework — and a usable matching tool — for sustainable crop establishment.