Figure 1. The rhizomes of different food crops host distinct communities of phenazine-producing bacteria.

Root microbiomes are enriched in bacteria that produce phenazines, a group of compounds that protects plants from fungal diseases. Dar et al. have developed a method that allows them to compare which phenazine-producing bacteria are present in different soil and crop samples. This allows them to identify which phenazine-producing bacteria may be important for different food crops. Some of the phenazine-producing microbes are associated with specific plants: on the left, tomatoes are shown with specific microbes in blue, while on the right wheat is shown with specific microbes in green. Other microbes are common across different ecosystems: yellow and peach-colored coccoid microbes are shown with both crops. Under each crop, the chemical structures of different types of phenazines show the diversity of these compounds, which depends on the bacteria producing them.