Roots represent a critical interface between plants and their environment. In the short term, I will implement a high-throughput soil-based DiTech PlantArray system to reproducibly collect root exRNAs under controlled stress scenarios such as drought, nutrient shifts, and elevated temperature. This will allow me to define conserved and species-specific root exRNAs and explore how they reflect or influence microbial community structure and stress responses. These projects are relatively low risk, building on established protocols that my lab has created (Henry, et al., in preparation) with collaborators, but will generate unique datasets that are not yet available in the field. This will also open the door to potential collaborators who would like to study the effect of any stress in the root microbiome without destructive techniques. 

In the long term, I seek to reframe root exRNAs as dynamic regulators of the rhizosphere, especially in wheat. The high-risk, high-reward element of this program lies in demonstrating causality: showing that root exRNAs do not merely correlate with environmental changes, but actively shape microbial networks and plant resilience. Success here would open a new paradigm where root-secreted RNAs are recognized as key mediators of plant adaptation under climate stress.