Abstract
<jats:p>Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying plant-microbe interactions is essential for developing innovative microbe-based agrotechnologies. However, deciphering these mechanisms within the complexity of natural microbial communities remains challenging. Such challenges can be addressed by employing synthetic microbial communities (SynComs) derived from well characterized microbial culture collections. Despite their importance, plant-associated microbial collections from major agricultural crops remain scarce. To bridge this gap, we established TriMic, a taxonomically and functionally representative culture collection of wheat root-associated bacteria. Complementing this collection, we include high quality genome sequences and an overview of genes involved in plant colonization, nutrient cycling, and plant growth promotion. Furthermore, we expanded this experimental toolkit by designing a reduced complexity SynCom that enables controlled dissection of plant-microbe interactions. Together, these resources lay the groundwork for mechanistic studies of plant-microbe interactions to accelerate biostimulant development aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity and sustainability. The TriMic collection and whole genomes are publicly available at the DSMZ (https://www.dsmz.de/collection/catalogue/microorganisms/microbiota/trimic) and NCBI.</jats:p>