A Rice Receptor for Mycorrhizal Fungal Signals Opens New Opportunities for the Development of Sustainable Agricultural Practices

Improving crop plant productivity in the current scenario of global climate change is among the major challenges for an ever-growing human population. In this respect, there is great interest in root symbioses such as arbuscular mycorrhizas (AMs) and nitrogen-fixing symbioses (NFSs), with their ability to feed plants with microbe-derived inorganic nutrients and extend plant tolerance to drought, salt stress, and pathogenic attacks (Harman and Uphoff, 2019). A recent paper by He et al. (2019) provides long-awaited advancement in our understanding of plant symbiotic signaling; the outcomes promise to be of high relevance for boosting the use of plant symbioses in sustainable agricultural practices. In fact, the beneficial effects of these symbioses are well known, but their implementation under agricultural conditions requires a thorough understanding of the molecular mechanisms that control the interaction between host plants and their symbionts and that have evolved over millions of years.