| The results of the PotatoMETAbiome project have contributed to the development of sustainable forms of potato cultivation, currently largely based on high levels of fertilizers, pesticides and water, by providing new insights into the functions of the soil microbiome and plant-microbe interactions. To enable sustainable potato production, it is beneficial to consider plants as meta-organisms that engage in many interactions with their microbiome. In this project, new insights into the interactions of the potato plant with the soil microbiome were obtained and their role in the context of different potato cultivars with different susceptibility to (a)biotic stress was investigated. In addition, important microbial strains that have a positive effect in adverse conditions were investigated. The resulting findings were validated in field trials to verify their applicability under production conditions. The results obtained will promote the development of sustainable potato cultivation in the main European growing areas. This approach could also have implications for future breeding strategies and improve potato resilience to environmental problems associated with climate change. In particular, developing plants with optimal tillage (improved root biomass) and microbiome acquisition will reduce the impact of abiotic stresses such as drought, as well as biotic stresses from pathogens. In addition, these traits could improve the resource use efficiency of the plant through interactions with beneficial microbes. This improvement in potato resilience will lead to a decrease in fertilizer and pesticide use, which could reduce the environmental footprint of potato production. In the completed project, microbial consortia were evaluated using modern high-throughput sequencing of plant samples to subsequently optimize their use. For this purpose, bioinformatic analyses based on state-of-the-art methods were performed and data obtained from field trials were correlated using appropriate statistical methods. From this, data were obtained that can be used to further improve sustainable applications for potato cultivation. |