A 10 million year story of the rhizobacterium and the plant – did the bacterium make the plant drought tolerant?

Climate change is decreasing the yield of many agricultural crops due to drought, which directly hampers the worldwide food security. For quite some time it has been known that root oncogenic loci-(rol)-genes - trough evolution - have been naturally incorporated into the DNA of several plant genera. This gene transfer has been facilitated by the rhizobacterium Rhizobium rhizogenes (formerly Agrobacterium rhizogenes). Interestingly, is it only some plant species within these plant genera that contain rol-genes and not all…

The key question is therefore: “Is there an evolutionary advantage of having rol-genes?”

The answer seems to be yes, but so far, proof for this is lacking, but a recent paper could give a clue, by comparing the habitats of the plants containing rol-genes, it suggests that these plants grow dry places – and hereby it holds the key result that harboring rol-genes causes improved drought tolerance… Hence, the unorthodox idea is to apply rol-genes as a key impact non-GMO breeding method (as wild bacterial strains are used) to obtain drought tolerant crops and thereby contribute to increased food security.