Figure 4.

Different approaches to understand the role of the root microbiome in plants. Schematic representation of information processing strategies (top-down and bottom-up) and the approaches that stand on the edges of them (reductionist and holistic). Experimentation complexity increases when more microorganisms are added to the investigation, whereas traits and member certainty decrease. Reductionist approaches tend to rely on causality analyzes, whereas holistic approaches most likely rely on correlational analyzes. SynCom experimentation lies in the middle ground, allowing a better understanding of microbe–microbe interactions.