Breeding of microbiomes conferring salt tolerance to plants

Microbiome breeding by host-mediated selection is a technique to artificially select for microbiomes conferring benefits to plants. Here, we describe leaf ionomics, microbial community composition, and network analyses of a microbiome-breeding experiment to generate microbiomes conferring salt tolerance to Brachypodium distachyon, a model for cereal crops. Plants receiving microbiomes selected to confer tolerance to either sodium- or aluminium-stress produced 69-198% higher total seed weight than plants receiving control microbiomes. Sodium-selected microbiomes reduced leaf-sodium concentration by 50%, whereas aluminium-selected microbiomes had no effect on leaf-tissue nutrient concentration, suggesting different mechanisms underlying microbiome-mediated salt tolerance. By testing these selected microbiomes in a cross-fostering experiment, we show that artificially-selected microbiomes attain (a) ecological robustness contributing to transplantability (inheritance) of microbiome-encoded..., Methods related to the collection and subsequent analyses of these data are described in detail in the accompanying manuscript.
, , # Data from: Breeding of microbiomes conferring salt tolerance to plants

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h44j0zpwg](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.h44j0zpwg)

## Description of the data and file structure

##### Data and scripts used in the analyses presented in the manuscript \"Breeding of microbiomes conferring salt tolerance to plants\"

\* Details regarding the collection of data (as well as subsequent analyses) are provided in detail in the published manuscript ([https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-025-02261-0](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40168-025-02261-0)) and in **Mueller** ***et al*** **2021** (\"Artificial selection on microbiomes to breed microbiomes that confer salt tolerance to plants\", *mSystems* Vol. 6, No. 6; [doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.01125-21](https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.01125-21)). The Supplementary Methods of Mueller *et al* 2021, in particular file **msystems.01125-21-t0001.pdf**, has extensive details on the experimental design and protocols. For any questions related to d...,