4  CONCLUDING REMARKS
Plants have adapted to growth in complex and competitive ecosystems during their evolutionary history. They need to compete with interspecific and conspecific plants for light, water, and nutrients, and communicate with neighboring plants to anticipate upcoming biotic/abiotic challenges (Ballaré & Austin, 2019, Effah, Holopainen & McCormick, 2019, Hodge, Fitter & Robinson, 2013, Hortal et al. , 2017). However, only some of the competition and communication mechanisms rely on the plant genome. Plant microbiota have pivotal roles in nutrient solubility and uptake, especially nitrogen, phosphorus, and iron (Adesemoye, Torbert & Kloepper, 2008, Sharifi, Ahmadzadeh, Sharifi-Tehrani & Talebi-Jahromi, 2010). Microbiota also improve water use efficiency and osmotic stress response (Fan, Hu, Huang, Huang, Li & Palta, 2015, Sharifi & Ryu, 2018c). The plant holobiome leverages the collection of its member genes to optimize performance and survival. Plants have spatiotemporal layers of defense consisting of rhizosphere microbes, endophytes, pattern-triggered immunity, effector-triggered immunity, and recruited natural enemies; each of these can efficiently suppress specific groups of attackers (Carrión et al. , 2019, Sharifi & Ryu, 2017). Because of these advantages conferred by microbiota, plants donate 10–30% of their carbon and nitrogen to the rhizosphere to organize their microbiota.
Information and signal transferring systems play important roles in plant growth and survival. Plants decipher their complex habitat situations by perceiving physical and chemical cues and signals, either directly from neighboring plants or indirectly from their symbionts such as mycorrhiza, endophytic fungi and dodder. Previous research has characterized the signal types and signal mediators involved in plant interactions with other members of the ecosystem and revealed that deaf and mute mutants of plants have reduced ecological competence. However, plants may lose some of their communication abilities during domestication and plant breeding programs. Therefore, plant breeders and genetic engineers should have a holistic view of plants as members of the holobiome. Otherwise, small changes in key ecology-related genes may substantially affect plant performance, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect.
Agricultural practices also affect plant-plant communication. As we mentioned above, no-tillage and minimum tillage systems preserve common mycorrhizal networks and endophytic fungi as mediators of wired plant-plant communication. Moreover, Information can transfer between plants during intercropping or from crop to crop in the next season. Thus, recent advances in our understanding of plant-plant communication can help manage agricultural practices so that they utilize the abilities of plants to exploit ecological interactions, and survive in competitive environments.