Drought is a major cause of the present decrease in crop yield and agricultural productivity around the globe. The disastrous effects of drought on plants call for a renewed concern on effective strategies to improve plant growth and yield under drought stress. This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of Arthrobacter arilaitensis and Streptomyces pseudovenezuelae to improve maize growth under drought stress at three soil moisture levels using two inoculation methods. Seven rhizosphere actinomycetes isolates were screened for the production of plant growth promoting (PGP) traits and it was observed that all isolates produced one or more PGP properties. The inoculated plants were not only protected from the deleterious effects of drought, but also showed significant increases in the physiological parameters measured. The findings of this study suggest that these isolates are important tools capable of being developed into bio-inoculants to effectively improve drought tolerance in plants.

Soil degradation remains an ongoing process that is exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Consequently, these processes decrease soil organic matter and nutrient contents, soil biological functions, and plant productivity. The addition of organic amendments (OAs) to the soil is a widespread practice to enhance soil quality and the health of agricultural soils. One of the most significant microbial hotspots controlling the processes, dynamics, and cycling of nutrients, carbon and water in terrestrial ecosystems is the rhizosphere. Understanding the continuing transformations of OAs and the distribution of different factors (C, nutrients, and microbial activities) across and along roots is crucial in the rhizosphere. The application of OAs to soil increases soil organic matter and nutrients, water holding capacity, improves soil structure and stimulates soil microbial activity and biomass. This review evaluates the role of the rhizosphere microbial community in organically amended soils for promoting plant growth and health. The diversity of the rhizosphere microbiome and the mechanisms used in plant protection are discussed.

The plant microbiome is pivotal to sustainable agriculture and global food security, yet some challenges hinder fully harnessing it for field-scale impact. These challenges span measurement and integration, ecological predictability and translation across environments and seasons. Key obstacles include technical challenges, notably overcoming the limits of current sequencing for low-abundance taxa and whole-community coverage, integrating multi-omics data to uncover functional traits, addressing spatiotemporal variability in microbial dynamics, deciphering the interplay between plant genotypes and microbial communities, and enforcing standardized controls, metadata, depth targets and reproducible workflows. The rise of synthetic biology, omics tools, and artificial intelligence offers promising avenues for engineering plant–microbe interactions, yet their adoption requires regulatory, ethical, and scalability issues alongside clear economic viability for end-users and explicit accounting for evolutionary dynamics, including microbial adaptation and horizontal gene transfer to ensure durability. Furthermore, there is a need to translate research findings into field-ready applications that are validated across various soils, genotypes, and climates, while ensuring that advances benefit diverse regions through global, interdisciplinary collaboration, fair access, and benefit-sharing. Therefore, this review synthesizes current barriers and promising experimental and computational strategies to advance plant microbiome research. Consequently, a roadmap for fostering resilient, climate-smart, and resource-efficient agricultural systems focused on benchmarked, field-validated workflows is proposed.

Many studies have shown that the maize rhizosphere comprises several plant growth-promoting microbes, but there is little or no study on the effects of land-use and management histories on microbial functional gene diversity in the maize rhizosphere soils in Africa. Analyzing microbial genes in the rhizosphere of plants, especially those associated with plant growth promotion and carbon cycling, is important for improving soil fertility and crop productivity. Here, we provide a comparative analysis of microbial genes present in the rhizosphere samples of two maize fields with different agricultural histories using shotgun metagenomics. Genes involved in the nutrient mobilization, including nifA, fixJ, norB, pstA, kefA and B, and ktrB were significantly more abundant (α = 0.05) in former grassland (F1) rhizosphere soils. Among the carbon-cycling genes, the abundance of 12 genes, including all those involved in the degradation of methane were more significant (α = 0.05) in the F1 soils, whereas only five genes were significantly more abundant in the F2 soils. α-diversity indices were different across the samples and significant differences were observed in the β diversity of plant growth-promoting and carbon-cycling genes between the fields (ANOSIM, p = 0.01 and R = 0.52). Nitrate-nitrogen (N-NO₃) was the most influential physicochemical parameter (p = 0.05 and contribution = 31.3%) that affected the distribution of the functional genes across the samples. The results indicate that land-use and management histories impact the composition and diversity of plant growth-promoting and carbon-cycling genes in the plant rhizosphere. The study widens our understanding of the effects of anthropogenic activities on plant health and major biogeochemical processes in soils.

As an ecological unit, the rhizosphere microbiome preserves an enormous and largely unexplored diversity of microbes that play essential roles in plant health and soil functions. Omics technologies encompassing high‐throughput approaches such as metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, and metaproteomics provide helpful tools to unravel the taxonomic composition, gene expression patterns, and functional activities of microbial communities. These technologies have revolutionized microbial ecology by enabling direct access to genomic and functional insights into plant microbiomes without needing cultivation. Furthermore, human activities significantly affect microbial composition and function in the rhizosphere, altering essential biochemical processes. This review describes the roles of plant‐associated communities in plant health and productivity, discusses various methods for studying microbial diversity in plant microbiomes, highlights recent advances in omics technologies, and how they expand our understanding of microbial diversity and function in rhizosphere microbiomes. We also address the applications of these methods, as well as their strengths and limitations. Moreover, the review examines the anthropogenic factors that impact microbial communities and discusses strategies for harnessing the resilience of rhizosphere microbes. The information presented here is vital for developing sustainable agricultural practices and addressing global challenges such as climate change and food security.