The Poplar Microbiome

In recent years, plant–microorganism interactions and their impact on plant growth and health, and in turn on plant-driven ecosystem services (e.g., carbon storage, phytoremediation) have gained a lot of interest in the scientific community. This interest has been stimulated by the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies that greatly improved the capacity of scientists to efficiently characterize microbiomes, which are defined as the pool of genomes of the microorganisms (e.g., bacteria, fungi) present in a particular habitat. Among trees, the poplar microbiome is one of the most extensively studied. The goal of this chapter is to summarize the current literature on the poplar microbiome, first by describing the microbiomes of belowground and aboveground parts of poplars, and second by highlighting links between poplar genetic and the microbiome. This second part includes a review of studies specifically addressing the impact of transgenesis on the poplar microbiome. Overall, this chapter highlights the diversity of the poplar microbiome and the importance of further assessing links between tree genetic and the microbiome.