About ICRM

The plant root and associated microbiome system, which is functionally analogous to the animal gut and associated microbiome, plays important roles in biogeochemical cycles and promoting plant growth and health. Citrus is the No. 1 fruit crop in the world in term of its economic value and citrus production is facing many challenges including nutrient limitation, and diseases. However, the genomic, taxonomic and functional contents of citrus growth and health involved microbiome remain largely unknown. Present here is a large-scale gene catalog of the root-associated microbiome of citrus, via deep metagenome sequencing with samples collected from six continents across distinct biogeographic conditions, including China, Australia, France, Italy, Spain, South Africa, U.S.A. and Brazil. More than 183 million unigenes, 59% of which could not be annotated based on current databases, were archived from our data. Only 0.042% and 0.577% of the citrus microbiome unigenes found homologs in the human and ocean microbiome gene catalogs (95% identity, 90% coverage), respectively, whereas majorities of the taxonomic and functional contents of the human and ocean microbiome got homologous hits in the citrus microbiome, suggesting the microbial complexity and comprehensiveness of our citrus microbiome. The more details for how we did this, and the full plot of citrus microbiome, could be found in our paper (Xu, J. et al. The structure and function of the global citrus microbiome. (2018)). You are welcomed to search for the microbial genes or download the data.

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