Conditioning of soil with wild plant species suppresses thrips. Conditioning the soil microbiome through plant-soil feedbacks suppresses an aboveground insect pest

We first used four wild grass and four forb species to condition living soil. Then we inoculated those soils including their different microbiomes into sterilized soil in which chrysanthemum was grown, and we evaluated the soil microbiome (with amplicon sequencing) in the inocula and after chrysanthemum growth, as well as plant and herbivore performance and levels of phenolic compounds in leaves.