Floral Nectar Microbiome: An Untapped Aspect and Its Overall Impact on Plants in Changing Global Scenarios

Sugar-rich floral nectar is an apt medium to support the growth of microbes. Bacterial and yeast communities are common nectar-inhabiting organisms. When residing in nectar, these microbes utilize nectar metabolites for their growth and survival, and secrete microbial chemicals and volatiles into the nectar, thereby affecting the overall biochemical composition and odor of the nectar. Supposedly, this modified nectar may influence the plant-pollination networks. These microbial inhabitants and their introduction into nectar are controlled by numerous biotic and abiotic variables, making it a multi-dimensional interaction web, which, when disturbed due to any change in any of the biotic or abiotic variables, decouples these long-evolved plant-pollinator relations and interaction webs of multiple communities. Ever-magnifying global climate change becomes an added driver to speed up these changes in nectar biochemistry and speeding up the decoupling. It becomes crucial to study these dynamic relationships in the upcoming scenarios of climate projected globally to determine the solutions and protect the communities from dwindling, simultaneously addressing the food security issue.