Research in the Edwards Lab at Texas A&M University investigates how plants acquire their root microbiomes and how these communities impact growth and sustainability of crops and bioenergy grasses.

Plants are colonized by hundreds to thousands of different bacterial strains which comprise the plant microbiome. These bacterial communities can convey beneficial, neutral, or detrimental effects to host plant growth. Therefore, we are interested to dissect how plants acquire and control their root-associated bacterial communities and to better understand how these bacterial communities control their plants.

We utilize quantitative genetic tools (i.e. GWAS and QTL mapping) as well as high-throughput bacterial culturing to develop and test hypotheses around plant-microbe interactions. We primarily study these interactions in rice plants and native bioenergy crops.