Soil microbial community differences drive variation in Pinus sylvestris physiology, productivity, and responses to elevated CO2
Our results show that soil microbial community variation directly affects P. sylvestris physiology, productivity, and responses to eCO<sub>2</sub>, and may enhance plant growth through improved nitrogen use efficiency. Surprisingly, growth with different microbial communities even more strongly impacted plant productivity than a doubling of atmospheric CO<sub>2</sub> concentrations. The soil microbiome therefore plays a key role in supporting plant nutrition and growth under ambient and eCO<sub>2</sub> conditions, and in turn, may confer increased forest resistance to climate change.
Authors
- Stefan F. Hupperts (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9498-5183)
- Henning Meesenburg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3035-4737)
- Arthur Geßler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1910-9589)
- Mark Anthony (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8350-6255)
- Andreas Schmitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9624-1932)
- Peter Waldner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8982-6156)
- Lalasia Bialic‐Murphy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6046-8316)
- MARCUS C. SCHAUB (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0158-8892)
- Markus Wagner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2263-304X)
- Pim van den Bulk
- Aswin Krishna (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5973-7890)
- A. Hensen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8467-7785)
- Colin Averill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4035-7760)
- Marco Ferretti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8488-0804)
- Frank Jacob (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-8623-0653)
- Nora Röckel
- Alexandra Traistaru
Institutions
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (NL)
- Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (CH)
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SE)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Institute of Forest Ecology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SK)
- Eon Corporation (United States) (US)
- Nordwestdeutsche Forstliche Versuchsanstalt (DE)
- Ministry for Environment, Agriculture, Conservation and Consumer Protection (DE)
- Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NL)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Environmental Microbiome
- Published
- 2025-12-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s40793-025-00828-w
- Primary Topic
- Plant responses to elevated CO2
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00