2026 Webinar Series – Registration Is Now Open!
The Phytobiomes Alliance is hosting three free online webinars in winter-spring 2026 featuring researchers working at the forefront of phytobiomes science. From Earth-system modeling to root-soil chemistry each event offers unique insights into how plants, soil, microbes, and environment interact to shape sustainable agriculture and ecosystem resilience.
Free | Online | Wednesdays @11:00 AM ET
🌍 28 January 2026
Climate Futures, Earth System Models, and Crop Productivity
Presenter: Sabrina Cohen – Colorado State University, USA
Explore how climate change – and proposed geoengineering approaches like stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) – may affect heat, precipitation, soil moisture, and ultimately crop productivity in climate-vulnerable regions like West Africa, South Central America, South and East Asia.
💧 25 March 2026
Ecosystems-to-Molecules: How Historical Precipitation Shapes the Soil Microbiota’s Effect on Plant Drought Tolerance
Presenter: Maggie Wagner – University of Kansas, USA
Discover how past precipitation leave a “legacy” in soil microbial communities, affecting their functional traits and the ability of plants to tolerate future droughts.
🌱 22 April 2026
Digging into the Rhizosphere Chemistry: How Plants Engineer their Soil Environment
Presenter: Adrien Frémont – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Plants actively shape their surrounding soil through root exudation, releasing thousands of metabolites that influence soil chemistry, microbial communities, and ecosystem functions. This webinar will present mechanistic insights into how root-derived chemistry mediates plant–microbe–soil interactions under diverse environmental conditions.