From application of the plant growth-promoting traits ontology towards a sustainable plant production

The currently established plant growth-promoting traits ontology PGPT-BASE comprises approx. 6,400 bacterial genetic traits related to known plant growth-promoting and symbiotic bacteria (PGPBs). Due to the hierarchical functional classification of all single PGPTs, differences not only for sole gene occurrences and abundances but also for entire PGPT processes can be distinguished. Our recent GWAS analysis suggests a high potential to discover PGPBs in alternative environments besides plants and soils. Exploring the patterns of PGPTs among all environments extends significantly our current understanding of common host-associated evolutional processes. As genetic and functional PGPT fingerprints together with the virulence marker gene distribution and strain-pathogen proximity will empower the estimation of plant growth-promotion and biosafety potential, we have implemented a sophisticated algorithm weighting the PGPT traits according their abundance to maximize their functional association regarding environmental conditions (e.g., halotolerance, phosphate starvation) and to minimize their risk of harmfulness for plant, animal and human hosts. Thus, we encourage you to use our genome PGPT annotation service PGPT-Pred and PGPB prediction tool PGPB-Pred, among other features, accessible via the web database for plant associated bacteria “PLaBAse.