Flower Microbiology: Old concept but new approach | Biomedgrid

Since the ancient times and till now, flowers have been considered as a significant entity and nature's gift. Flowers imparted several key roles in art, religion, health and ornamental arena. Like other recent innovative studies, exploring human microbiota especially the gut microbiome the plant microbiota or plant microbiome has also gained a grained vision to unfold the hidden mysteries of biological world. Moreover, symbiosis of plants with the microbes are also an interesting debate nowadays [1,2]. Although it was shown in 1800's that flowers inhabited with microbes but the ecological relationship between them remained undiscovered [3,4]. Aforementioned already a long time in history, when flowers and other parts of plants studied but the relation of plant in respect to microbe was first investigated by Lorenz Hiltner dated back to 1904 [5]. The gradual understanding of complex associations and ecological role between plants and respective species of microbes opened unknown concepts. In addition to this, a term “phyllosphere” was coined by F.T Last in 1955 further stretching the chain of information, calling the aboveground portion of plants as the habitat for microbial communities [6].