Communities of microorganisms in the soil can affect plants’ growth and interactions with aboveground herbivores. Thus, there is growing interest in utilizing soil microbiomes to improve plant performance in agriculture (e.g., for pest control), but little is known about the phenotypic responses of various crop species to different microbiomes. In this study, we inoculated four crop species from different botanical families, maize (Zea mays, Poaceae), cucumber (Cucumis sativus, Cucurbitaceae), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum, Solanaceae), and lettuce (Lactuca sativa, Asteraceae), with diverse soil microbiomes originating from actively-managed agricultural fields or fallow fields under varying stages of succession (1, 3, and 16-years post-agriculture) sourced from a large-scale field experiment. We compared the crops’ responses to these different microbiomes by assessing their growth and resistance to two generalist insect pests, cabbage looper (Trichoplusia ni) and fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda). These different microbiomes affected both plant growth and resistance, but the effects were species-specific. For instance, lettuce produced the largest leaves when inoculated with a 3-year fallow microbiome, the microbiome in which cucumber performed worst. Plants were generally more resistant to T. ni when inoculated with the later succession microbiomes, particularly in contrast to those treated with agricultural microbiomes. However, for tomato plants, the opposite pattern was observed with regard to S. frugiperda resistance. Collectively, these results indicate that plant responses to microbiomes are species-specific and emphasize the need to characterize the responses of taxonomically diverse plant species to different microbiomes.

土壤中的微生物群落会影响植物的生长以及与地上食草动物的相互作用。因此，人们越来越关注利用土壤微生物组来改善农业中的植物表现（例如，以控制害虫），但对各种作物对不同微生物群的表型反应知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们接种了来自不同植物科的四种作物种，玉米（玉米（禾本科），黄瓜（黄瓜，葫芦科），番茄（番茄，茄科）和生菜（紫花苜蓿，菊科），其土壤微生物群源于大规模田间试验，这些土壤微生物群来自主动管理的农田或休耕农田（在农业发展后1、3和16年的不同演替阶段）。我们通过评估农作物对两种普通害虫白菜弯er的生长和抵抗力，比较了农作物对这些不同微生物的反应。毛癣菌）和秋天粘虫（草地贪夜蛾）。这些不同的微生物群落影响植物的生长和抗性，但影响是物种特异性的。例如，生菜接种3年休耕微生物组后，产生的叶子最大，黄瓜在其中表现最差。植物通常更耐ni当接种后来的微生物群时，尤其是与农业微生物群相比。但是，对于番茄植物，在弗氏链球菌抵抗性。总体而言，这些结果表明植物对微生物群落的反应是特定于物种的，并强调了表征生物分类学上不同的植物物种对不同微生物群落的反应的必要性。