No evidence of foliar disease impact on crop root functional strategies and soil microbial communities: What does this mean for organic coffee?

Global climate change is increasing pest and pathogen pressures on plant communities, deteriorating optimal plant functioning. In plant communities, root functional trait expression and microbial communities are important indicators of plant functioning belowground, and, when confronted with pathogens aboveground, can simultaneously reflect plant defence strategies. Yet, while research is continuing to emerge on the response of root functional traits and microbial processes to pathogens aboveground, little work has investigated these interactions in tree-crops, or the role organic amendments play in moderating these relationships. The main objective of this study is to disentangle the dynamic effects of pathogens and amendments on root functional traits (i.e., specific root length and area, root diameter, root length density, root nitrogen, and root carbon to nitrogen ratio) and root endophytic fungal communities. As a model, we use Coffea arabica (coffee) variety Caturra along a gradie...