Delving into Medicinal Plant Microbiomes: Utilizing Advanced Approaches to Decipher Functional Potential for Plant Health and Therapeutic Properties

In recent times, the study of plant-associated microbiomes has surged due to their profound impact on plant well-being, growth, and ecological interactions. This chapter explores medicinal plants and their complex microbial ecosystems. With medicinal plants being crucial in traditional and modern medicine, understanding their microbiomes is vital. This chapter explains how microbiomes in the rhizosphere, phyllosphere, and endosphere enhance medicinal plant health and therapeutic potential. Recent research reveals microbial contributions to plant defense, nutrient uptake, immune balance, and stress resilience. This chapter provides an overview of tools to study medicinal plant microbiomes, from traditional methods to high-throughput sequencing. Each technique sheds light on the intricate interplay between plants and microbes, with merits and limitations. This chapter also examines advances in metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, virome analysis, and culturomics, enabling an understanding of microbial dynamics. By merging multi-omics and bioinformatics, new paths open to unravel complex microbiome data, predicting functions and associations. The concept of synthetic communities introducing tailored microbial groups to enhance medicinal plant yield is also explored. Overall, this chapter deeply explores medicinal plant microbiomes, highlighting microbial roles in plant well-being and bioactive metabolite production. It equips researchers with resources to unravel plant–microbe connections, driving innovations in medicine and agriculture.