Phytobiomes Alliance Newsletter – December 2017

Welcome to the first newsletter of the Phytobiomes Alliance

New project

The French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR – French National Research Agency) recently announced the funding of SEEDS, a project investigating the ecological and biological processes involved in microbial community assembly during seed development. More specifically, project participants will monitor the succession pattern of the microbial community during seed development of radish and bean through a combination of high-throughput culture-dependent and -independent approaches. The project is coordinated by Alliance Coordinating Committee member Matthieu Barret, a scientist at the Research Institute on Horticulture and Seeds at Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA – National Institute of Agricultural Research). The 4-year project will start in January 2018.

Publications

Press releases

• 31 October 2017 – University of Maryland joins the Phytobiomes Alliance
• 14 September 2017 – Colorado State University Joins the Phytobiomes Alliance
• 6 June 2017 – Penn State Joins the Phytobiomes Alliance
• 19 April 2017 – INRA Joins the Phytobiomes Alliance

In the press

• 02 October 2017 – Global Engage blog – Phytobiomes: Embracing Complexity to Achieve a New Vision for Agriculture
• 22 August 2017 – PNAS article: Probing the phytobiome to advance agriculture
• 16 July 2017 – Scientific American article: Is This the Next Green Revolution? (subscription required)

New on the website

We have expanded the website content to reflect the growing activities of the Alliance.
In the About section, you can learn more about Phytobiomes generally and the Alliance, its vision, mission, structure and team. No time to read everything? Have a look at the poster for a quick summary.
Under the News section, you will find the latest press releases issued by the Alliance, as well as articles published in the press about phytobiomes or the Alliance.
Looking for a list of upcoming Phytobiomes-related conferences and symposia? Go to the Events section.
The People section is where you can learn more about the people involved in the Alliance, Coordinating Committee members, and Project Leaders, with their affiliation, research interest and current phytobiomes-related projects.
To know more about who is providing financial support to the Alliance, go to the Sponsors section where each Alliance sponsor has its own dedicated page.

Upcoming events

• 17 January 2018 –  Plant and Animal Genome Conference, San Diego, California, USA – The Alliance has organized the workshop “Exploring Phytobiomes“. For a list of speakers, consult the workshop page.
• 18 Feb 2018 – AAAS Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, USA – The Alliance will hold a symposium: “Phytobiomes Research to Improve Agricultural Productivity“. For a list of speakers, consult the symposium page.
• 26-28 February 2018 – Microbiome AgBiotech Summit, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Kellye Eversole will give a presentation on phytobiomes.
• 18-21 June 2018 – 10th International Symposium on Fungal Endophytes of Grasses, Salamanca, Spain
• 19-22 June 2018 – 21st Penn State Plant Biology Symposium: Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes.
• 15-20 July 2018 – 9th International Symbiosis Society Congress, Corvallis, OR, USA

A list of events (upcoming and past) is available on the website.
If you are going to or are aware of a conference, workshop or seminar on phytobiomes-related topics and if that event is not listed on the website, please let us know.

Recent Presentations

• 7 Dec 2017 – International Symposium Microbe-assisted crop production – opportunities, challenges and needs, Vienna, Austria – Kellye Eversole and Coordinating Committee member, Angela Sessitch (Austrian Institute of Technology) chaired the Phytobiomes Alliance session and Kellye Eversole presented during the session.
• 2-3 Nov 2017 –  Kellye Eversole presented at the Partnership in Biocontrol, Biostimulants & Microbiome Congress, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

For PDFs of these presentations and others made by the Alliance Leadership team, go to this page

Our Sponsors

The Phytobiomes Alliance is sponsored by Bayer CropScience, Eversole Associates, Monsanto, The Climate Corporation, INRA, Indigo, the Noble Research Institute, NewLeaf Symbiotics, Colorado State University, the University of Maryland, Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, the American Phytopathological Society, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and BioConsortia.

To learn more about our sponsors, have a look at the individual sponsor pages on the website.

Meet the team

Kellye Eversole – Executive Director. Kellye represents the Alliance at all meetings and events.
Lori Leach – Chief Operating Officer. Lori makes sure that everything runs smoothly, she is responsible for the daily operations of the Alliance, from sponsor relations to Board reporting.
Isabelle Caugant – Communications Director. Isabelle is in charge of internal and external communication, as well as the management of the website and social media activities.
Mollie Hogan – Administrative Assistant and Logistics Manager. Mollie assists Lori on administrative tasks and is in charge of all logistics for events organized by the Alliance.

We wish you a happy new year!