ecology to out-compete and keep pests and pathogens off balance. Instead of
breeding resistance into them and just delaying our own defeat, we can cultivate
their competitors and stifle their opportunities to gain more than a toehold, in effect
keeping bad actors at bay by preferentially seating their more beneficial brethren at
the table. All in all, the tremendous adaptability of microbes means that we have to
adjust our tactics to forge new strategies that favor those with interests common
to ours.
A second major advance that influenced our view of the microbial world lay
rooted in recognizing the evolutionary power of symbioses as a key dimension to
inter-species competition—that life could be a team sport. For a century, Darwin’s
long shadow obscured the role of symbiotic relationships as biologists peered at life
through the lens of individual competition and predator-prey relationships. But along
the way, we discovered that much of the microbial world runs through highly
evolved relationships that parallel the familiar dance of pollinators and flowers in a
garden. And it turns out that symbiotic partnerships between plants and soil
microbes are central to plant health, just as our gut microbiome is a key factor in
determining human health. Recognition that microbial partnerships are fundamental
to the health and well-being of our crops and ourselves motivates re-evaluating
conventional practices in agriculture and medicine.
12.3 Agriculture
Selman Waksman and Robert Starkey were among the early researchers to identify
the botanical importance of soil microbes. Their 1931 book The Soil and the
Microbe recognized the key role soil life plays in decomposing once-living matter
and keeping elements circulating from soil to plants and animals and back again
(Waksman and Starkey 1931). After the realization that microbes use antibiotics to
repel competitors in the soil, it took decades to crack the chemical codes passed
between plants and soil life to reveal complex synergistic interactions central to plant
health and defense.
In the meantime, growing adoption of now-conventional agricultural practices
generally worked against the interests of microbial life that benefits the growth and
health of crops. Indeed, new advances in soil microbial ecology go a long way
toward explaining observations that animated early advocates for organic agriculture, like Sir Albert Howard (Howard 1940) and Lady Eve Balfour (Balfour 1943)
who argued that mycorrhizal fungi played instrumental roles in crop health. But in
their day, it remained unclear just how fungi and bacteria could partner with plants,
and they could not identify mechanisms to support their views, which were consequently dismissed in mainstream circles.
Decades later, I was trained to think of roots as like straws that plants use to slurp
up nutrients in soil water. But it turns out that roots are more of a two-way street,
with material leaving as well as entering plants. Root exudates can account for more
than a third of the carbon a plant captures through photosynthesis (Bais et al. 2006).
12 The Revolutionary Potential of the Hidden Half of Nature in Agriculture and. . .
197
breeding resistance into them and just delaying our own defeat, we can cultivate
their competitors and stifle their opportunities to gain more than a toehold, in effect
keeping bad actors at bay by preferentially seating their more beneficial brethren at
the table. All in all, the tremendous adaptability of microbes means that we have to
adjust our tactics to forge new strategies that favor those with interests common
to ours.
A second major advance that influenced our view of the microbial world lay
rooted in recognizing the evolutionary power of symbioses as a key dimension to
inter-species competition—that life could be a team sport. For a century, Darwin’s
long shadow obscured the role of symbiotic relationships as biologists peered at life
through the lens of individual competition and predator-prey relationships. But along
the way, we discovered that much of the microbial world runs through highly
evolved relationships that parallel the familiar dance of pollinators and flowers in a
garden. And it turns out that symbiotic partnerships between plants and soil
microbes are central to plant health, just as our gut microbiome is a key factor in
determining human health. Recognition that microbial partnerships are fundamental
to the health and well-being of our crops and ourselves motivates re-evaluating
conventional practices in agriculture and medicine.
12.3 Agriculture
Selman Waksman and Robert Starkey were among the early researchers to identify
the botanical importance of soil microbes. Their 1931 book The Soil and the
Microbe recognized the key role soil life plays in decomposing once-living matter
and keeping elements circulating from soil to plants and animals and back again
(Waksman and Starkey 1931). After the realization that microbes use antibiotics to
repel competitors in the soil, it took decades to crack the chemical codes passed
between plants and soil life to reveal complex synergistic interactions central to plant
health and defense.
In the meantime, growing adoption of now-conventional agricultural practices
generally worked against the interests of microbial life that benefits the growth and
health of crops. Indeed, new advances in soil microbial ecology go a long way
toward explaining observations that animated early advocates for organic agriculture, like Sir Albert Howard (Howard 1940) and Lady Eve Balfour (Balfour 1943)
who argued that mycorrhizal fungi played instrumental roles in crop health. But in
their day, it remained unclear just how fungi and bacteria could partner with plants,
and they could not identify mechanisms to support their views, which were consequently dismissed in mainstream circles.
Decades later, I was trained to think of roots as like straws that plants use to slurp
up nutrients in soil water. But it turns out that roots are more of a two-way street,
with material leaving as well as entering plants. Root exudates can account for more
than a third of the carbon a plant captures through photosynthesis (Bais et al. 2006).
12 The Revolutionary Potential of the Hidden Half of Nature in Agriculture and. . .
197