Our main research interest is to unravel how beneficial soil microbes prime the plant immune system, inducing Microbe-Induced Resistance (MIR) and thereby enhancing plant resistance against a wide range of pathogens and pests. More recently, we have begun to explore how MIR extends beyond the plant, leaving a MIR imprint, a molecular and physiological fingerprint, in herbivorous insects and their natural enemies that can cascade across trophic levels (DOI: 10.1016/j.tplants.2024.05.010).
We use a system biology approach to understand how MIR operates at the molecular and physiological levels and how its effects manifest in insect pests (MIR imprint). Within this framework, we integrate information across multiple plant and insect omics layers under different experimental conditions, together with genetic approaches such as mutants in key candidate genes, to generate mechanistic models of MIR.
We further investigate the role of whole soil microbiomes in shaping plant immune responses against insect pests. With this aim, we steer microbiomes by using plants as microbiome engineers, while examining the physiological, molecular, and agroecological aspects of plant-microbiome-insect interactions.
