Linking Plant and Microbial Traits to Soil Carbon for Reliable and Resilient Bioenergy Systems

ABSTRACT Bioenergy systems in the United States offer a dual opportunity to supply renewable feedstocks while enhancing ecosystem services such as hydrologic regulation, erosion control, and soil carbon (C) storage. National assessments highlight the potential to grow perennial energy crops to improve soil function and ecosystem resilience. Realizing this potential requires understanding the ecological mechanisms that govern how C is added, transformed, and stabilized in soils. Plant traits determine the quantity, depth, and chemistry of organic inputs, while microbial processes—including carbon use efficiency, necromass formation, and trophic interactions—mediate their transformation and partitioning among soil carbon pools. These biological pathways are shaped by soil physical and chemical properties, including aggregation, texture, and mineralogy, and by environmental drivers such as temperature, moisture, and disturbance, leading to context‐dependent outcomes across landscapes. Management practices that diversify feedstocks, minimize disturbance, and maintain soil cover can promote both biomass production and C retention, while microbial amendments and rhizosphere engineering offer emerging, but often context‐dependent, tools to optimize plant–microbe interactions. Trade‐offs between biomass yield and soil carbon storage may arise when systems favor rapid aboveground productivity at the expense of belowground inputs and microbial processing, underscoring the importance of trait combinations that support both functions. Advances in monitoring, reporting, and verification—spanning precision agriculture, remote sensing, and biosensing—are improving predictive capacity through microbial‐explicit process models and model–experiment (ModEx) frameworks. By connecting soil, plant, and microbial processes with advances in modeling and biosensing, this review outlines research priorities focused on trait‐based parameterization and ModEx integration. These priorities will support the design of bioenergy systems that are both reliable and resilient, enhancing renewable energy production and ecosystem sustainability.