Plant–Microbiome Interactions for Environmental Resilience: Rhizosphere Ecology, Climate Adaptation and Ecosystem Sustainability

Land degradation disrupts the partnerships between plants and soil micro-organisms that sustain nutrient cycling, soil structure, carbon storage and plant community assembly. Restoration practice has historically concentrated on vegetation and abiotic conditions, whereas the soil microbiome has usually been treated as a passive indicator that is expected to recover once plants return. This critical narrative review evaluates whether that expectation is justified and examines when deliberate manipulation of plant–microbiome partnerships improves restoration outcomes. Peer-reviewed literature published from January 2000 to 27 July 2026 was identified through multidisciplinary scholarly indexes, citation tracking and institutional sources, and was appraised for design, scale, duration and consistency with independent evidence. Five themes emerged. First, global syntheses and chronosequences show that revegetation moves soil microbial composition towards reference conditions, but a persistent restoration gap remains; bacteria generally recover faster than fungi, and microbial richness is a poor marker of recovery. Second, active interventions such as whole-soil transfer and native mycorrhizal inoculation can steer plant community trajectories and favour late-successional species, but effects depend strongly on inoculum origin, dose, site preparation and plant functional type. Third, commercial inoculants frequently show low viability and weak field performance, and deliberate introductions can reorganise resident communities in ways that are rarely monitored for long enough to judge persistence or harm. Fourth, evidence that restored microbiomes confer ecological resilience rests mainly on correlative network analyses and short-term drought experiments, so causal links between microbial recovery and ecosystem stability remain insufficiently tested. Fifth, the inclusion of soil microbiomes in nature-based solutions is conceptually well founded through carbon stabilisation, soil aggregation and possible human-health co-benefits, but standardised microbial indicators, reference states and governance of inoculant use are underdeveloped. The review concludes that plant–microbiome partnerships are a necessary but conditional component of ecological restoration. Their value is best supported where degradation has depleted microbial propagules and where locally sourced inocula are matched to site conditions. Long-term, replicated field experiments with functional and multi-kingdom monitoring are required before microbial restoration can be prescribed with confidence at landscape scales.