Learning from the hidden treasures of our ancestral plants

Abstract

Recent crop engineering is trying to manage high demands of food production and climate change, which poses a difficult task as an increase in sustainability is also desired. The use of beneficial rhizospheric plant-microbe interactions (BRPMI) offers an eco-friendly approach to chemical fertilization, pesticides and large amounts of water that make todays agricultural practices unsustainable. Ancestral crop species are gaining more attention in the field of crop engineering because of their greater genetic diversity and growth under harsher environments in comparison to domesticated species. This diversity might include genetic material that could be necessary for the use of BRPMI in agriculture. This review goes through recent knowledge on BRPMI and elucidates characteristics that should be considered when reintroducing genetic material from ancestral crop species. The reintroduction of this material with approaches like de novo domestication will point crop engineering towards more sustainable agriculture.