Pathobiome Studies as a Way to Identify Microbial Co-operators and/or Antagonists of the Incoming Plant Pathogen

Why should there be a collaboration project involving rice, Italy and Vietnam? There are many reasons starting from rice itself. Rice cultivation is fundamental for the nutrition of the world population: it is grown in more than hundred countries, with a total harvested area of approximately 158 million hectares. The annual production is around 700 million tons, with 90% occurring in Asia (https://ricepedia.org/rice-as-a-crop/rice-productivity). Will this production be sufficient in the next decades? World population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 and 11.2 billion people by 2100 (UN in United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division World Population Prospects, 2017). How to feed this large population and how to do it in a sustainable way will be a major future challenge. The current methodologies in rice cultivation are no longer sustainable due to the strong environmental impact they bring with such as deforestation, water scarcities, soil depletion and high levels of greenhouse gas emissions. New ways that protect and enhance yields in a sustainable and integrated manner, are needed to decrease the use of chemicals (fertilisers and pesticides) and improve productivity which will also need to cope with the decrease of agricultural land, the increment of no-food crops, the rural depopulation (more than two-thirds of the world population in 2050 will live in urban areas—UN in United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision, Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/352), 2014), pests, diseases and climate changes. Unfortunately, the current rate of progress in agriculture is not sufficient to eradicate hunger even by 2050, so the development of sustainable technologies is a worldwide priority (FAO in The future of food and agriculture. Trends and challenges. FAO, Rome, 2017). Rice cultivation, due to its diffusion, has also strong impact on atmosphere (de Miranda et al. in Am J Plant Sci 6:2009–2018, 2015), on soils and on health of consumers and farmers due to the large use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. In Vietnam, for instance, the value of pesticide market was estimated to be more than 800 million USD in 2015 (Vietnam Pesticide Association: https://cacasiasummit.com/Uploads/Download/7-Vietnam%20Agricuture%20and%20Status%20of%20Pesticides%20Market.pdf) and is expected to reach 6.8% of CARG annually in 2016–2020 (Mordor Intelligence: https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/vietnam-crop-protection-chemicals-market). Currently Italy is one of the top ten pesticide consumers in the world (Pretty and Bharucha in Insects 6:152–182, 2015). Therefore, studies focused on the research of new avenues for a more sustainable rice agriculture are urgently needed. Moreover, rice represents, more than other cereals, a cultural link between different countries and people, and, as consequence of this, interest for this crop crosses boundaries. Italy is the first European rice producer with 216.019 hectares used for this crop. Italian rice belongs to the Japonica group and some varieties are cultivated just in Italy contributing to enhance and spread the Italian culture in the world. Rice is also Vietnam's most important crop (7 million hectares are dedicated to rice cultivation) and is the primary staple food of the Vietnamese diet. Vietnamese rice belongs to the Japonica variety too, and its cultivation, as the Italian one, is under biotic and abiotic stresses related to drought, climate changes and pests.