Climate-driven shifts in soil microbiomes: implications for plant resilience in agriculture

Climate change is reshaping agricultural ecosystems by altering the composition, diversity, and functionality of soil microbiomes that underpin plant growth and resilience. Temperature variations, carbon dioxide levels, precipitation patterns, and soil physicochemical properties drive significant shifts in rhizosphere, phyllosphere, and endosphere communities, affecting nutrient cycling, carbon dynamics, and plant–microbe interactions. Extreme climate fluctuations might disrupt microbial communications mediated through plant root exudates leading to reduced diversity of beneficial microbes, loss of specialized symbionts and increase in the abundance of opportunistic pathogens. However, these pressures also tend to enhance plant resilience through recruitment of stress-tolerant taxa that act as biological buffers, aiding in plant adaptive mechanisms through the production of osmolytes and antioxidant enzymes, alterations of root architecture and phytohormone modulation to trigger defense responses. This review focuses on how escalating intensity of temperature and unpredictability of precipitation patterns drive significant shifts in plant microbial communities. It synthesizes mechanistic understanding of precipitation and temperature-driven microbial dynamics, their role in shaping plant adaptive responses and critically examines gaps and contradictions in the ongoing research. Finally, it highlights the agricultural implications of microbiome-based interventions through microbiome engineering, genotype-assisted recruitment and multi-omics-AI integration, to strengthen sustainable and climate-smart agriculture.