Rationally designed microbial communities in plants
To evaluate a RDMC approach, we investigated which species combinations should be evaluated under in vivo conditions to be able to select the plant phenotype of interest, which in the seedling phase would be optimal growth. Thereto, a strain library isolated from tomato plants was established (see supplemental information), and the functions present in the metagenome of the isolates were compared with all functions present in the metagenome of a rhizosphere community of tomato plants [59]. A minimum of four isolates, namely Pseudomonas chlororaphis subsp. aureofaciens NBRC (4.4.1), Herbaspirillum lusitanum P6-12 (E353), Pseudomonas entomophila (T114), and Arthrobacter sp. EpRS66 (EndoT52), was found to cover 60% of the predicted functions present in the tomato rhizosphere microbiome.