The microbiome refers to the collective genomes of all resident microorganisms of a particular organism,environment,or ecosystem.Plant surfaces and interior parts are populated by myriads of bacteria,fungi,and microbes from other kingdoms,which can have considerable effects on plant growth,disease resistance,abiotic stress tolerance,and nutrient uptake.Hence,deep insight into the mechanisms underlying plant microbiome evolution,composition,and function would provide new opportunities to improve crop health and yield and thus benefit global food security.To bolster the promise and potential of microbiome research in agriculture,Jianbing Yah from Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU,China) and Marcel Bucher from University of Cologne (UoC,Germany) developed the idea to organize an interdisciplinary workshop on plant microbiome late in 2017.This idea tued into the First Sino-German Symposium on Plant Health and Microbiomics,which was sponsored by The Sino-German Center for Research Promotion,a joint center of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) in Beijing.This bilateral symposium was held on September 24-28,2018,at HZAU in Wuhan,China.A total of 40 scientists from China,Germany,Japan,and USA were invited to share their progress in the field and their thoughts and ideas on plant-microbiota interactions and soil and plant microbiomes.