REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Cell Biology
Plant genomic and Microbial Interplay in the Rhizosphere under Salt Stress: A review
Provisionally accepted
- 1Business School, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
- 2Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
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Soil salinization has been considered as a global problem in agriculture, which decreases crop productivity and threatens food security. Salt stress causes complex physiological damages in plants such as ionic imbalance, osmotic stress, and oxidative damage. However, plants have developed several genomic mechanisms to reduce these negative influence that are further supported by dynamic interactions with Rhizosphere microbial communities. This review integrates current advances in understanding the interplay between plant genomes and the Rhizosphere microbiome under salt stress. It highlights the role plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), and microbial volatiles in modulating gene expression, and root architecture. Notably, PGPR such as Enterobacter sp. SA187 and Bacillus velezensis have been shown to up-regulate key stress-related genes and increase antioxidant enzyme activities, which boost plant resilience under salinity. These microbes also influence stress signaling pathways such as SOS and ABA. Furthermore, this review also discusses the effect of root exudates on microbial communities, the application of synthetic microbial consortia, and genome-scale strategies such as transcriptomics, GWAS, and CRISPR. Our findings show that root exudation patterns shift significantly under salt stress, which enriches beneficial microbial taxa such as Sphingomonas and Streptomyces. While volatile compounds like benzenoids and ketones contribute to systemic stress responses. Understanding the synergistic plant– microbe interactions provides a foundation for engineering salt-resilient crops and for the advancement of sustainable agricultural practices in saline soils.
Keywords: Rhizosphere microbiome, salt stress, plant–microbe interaction, rootexudates, stress resilience
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ren, Yan and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yi Ren, yiren445120210@outlook.com
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