A group of researchers of several nationalities who study the microbial ecology of plant rhizospheres has just published a paper on ISME Journal, one of the journals by the Nature Publishing Group that has a 9.328 impact factor. “Linking rhizosphere microbiome composition of wild and domesticated Phaseolus vulgaris to genotypic and root phenotypic traits” (doi:10.1038/ismej.2017.85) is an article whose first author is the Colombian Juan Pérez Jaramillo, from Wageningen University's Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), and also a member of Leiden University's Institute of Biology, in the Netherlands. Part of Juan Pérez's investigations was developed in 2015, at Embrapa, under the supervision of Rodrigo Mendes, deputy head of Research and Development at Embrapa Environment (Jaguariúna, SP). Besides Juan Pérez and Rodrigo Mendes, the co-authors include Víctor Carrión, Jos M Raaijmakers and Mattias de Hollander, from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology's Department of Microbial Ecology; Mirte Bosse, from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology's Department of Animal Ecology; Luiz Ferrão and Antonio Garcia, from the University of São Paulo Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture's Department of Genetics; and Camilo Ramírez, from the University of Antioquia's Institute of Biology, in Medellín, Colombia. Plant domestication can be considered an important landmark in the history of humankind, however, this process has caused an evident reduction in the pattern of genetic diversity of genetically improved crop species compared to their wild ancestors. The extent to which reduced genetic diversity has affected plant-microorganism interactions belowground has only just recently been unveiled, and it is one of the issues tackled by researchers who work in the frontier of scientific knowledge, attempting to understand the process with more clarity. The study investigated genetic relatedness, root phenotypic traits and rhizobacterial community composition of modern and wild samples of beans grown in agricultural soils in the Colombian Andes, a recognized center of common bean diversification. Along the bean domestication trajectory, that is, the path from the wild to modern bean, the study results evidenced a gradual decrease in the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes, mainly Chitinophagaceae and Cytophagaceae. On the other hand, they also pointed to an increase in the relative abundance of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria, in particular Nocardioidaceae and Rhizobiaceae, respectively. Overall, the results pointed to an evident relationship between common bean domestication, specific root morphological traits and rhizobacterial community assembly. The results observed, that is, the changes in microbiome composition that are established according to bean plant growth and health conditions, will be the object of new studies. Such studies will attempt to answer questions like whether plant domestication could compromise the beneficial effects of the rhizosphere microbiome, increase the understanding about the divergence in the rhizobacterial community, or provide new knowledge on how plant-microbe interactions are interlaced. As Rodrigo Mendes underscored, the study of plant microbiomes is extremely important, since such information could help in the manipulation of such communities with the aim of improving plant performance, either in the case of pathogen attacks or to sustainably improve agricultural productivity. “Just like humans, plants also rely on their microbiome for several functions, such as their defense against pathogens or for nutrition; assuming that the domestication process has mined the interaction between the microbiome and their host, the search for the “lost microorganisms” is a way to rescue microbiome functions that had been neglected throughout the process of the domestication of cultivated plants,” explained Mendes. Translation: Mariana Medeiros