Leadership for SDG 6.2: Is Diversity Missing?

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the global sanitation sector have not been the subject of extensive investigation or scrutiny. However, without diverse leadership, the sector will continue to experience failure, inefficient use of dwindling resources, and overall low sanitation coverage rates, with 2 billion people lacking sanitation access. This research presents the first quantitative study of sanitation leadership demographics.

Host-mediated microbiome engineering (HMME) of drought tolerance in the wheat rhizosphere.

Host-mediated microbiome engineering (HMME) is a strategy that utilizes the host phenotype to indirectly select microbiomes though cyclic differentiation and propagation. In this experiment, the host phenotype of delayed onset of seedling water deficit stress symptoms was used to infer beneficial microbiome-host interactions over multiple generations. By utilizing a host-centric selection approach, microbiota are selected at a community level, therein using artificial selection to alter microbiomes through both ecological and evolutionary processes.

Bioprospecting Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria That Mitigate Drought Stress in Grasses.

This study reports the application of a novel bioprospecting procedure designed to screen plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) capable of rapidly colonizing the rhizosphere and mitigating drought stress in multiple hosts. Two PGPR strains were isolated by this bioprospecting screening assay and identified as sp. (12D6) and sp.