Harnessing the Sorghum Microbiome for Enhancing Crop Productivity and Food Security Towards Sustainable Agriculture in Smallholder Farming.

Smallholder farming plays a crucial role in global food security, contributing more than half of the world's food supply. However, it is increasingly threatened by climate variability, declining soil fertility, and financial constraints, all of which suppress plant growth, reduce yields, and endanger livelihood stability. Addressing these challenges requires sustainable, eco-friendly alternatives to costly and environmentally damaging agrochemicals. Sorghum, a climate-resilient cereal, harbours a diverse microbiome that contributes significantly to its remarkable adaptability under adverse conditions. Harnessing the sorghum-associated microbiome, therefore, represents a promising, low-cost, and sustainable strategy to enhance sorghum productivity and resilience in smallholder farming systems. However, despite its potential, the adoption of microbiome-based technologies among smallholders remains limited due to a lack of local production units, poor government policies, knowledge gaps, and perceived risks. Although many studies report positive outcomes from microbiome-based interventions, translating this potential from controlled experiments to real-world field applications requires a critical evaluation of the efficacy, practicality, and limitations of microbial interventions. Furthermore, the outcomes of these studies are uneven, highly context-dependent, and often restricted to short-term or small-scale trials. This review, therefore, seeks to highlight current understanding of the sorghum microbiome, including its composition and the procedures for isolating and characterising beneficial microbes. It further evaluates the key challenges hindering adoption and proposes strategies to overcome them. Ultimately, this review advocates for integrating sorghum-associated microbiome technologies within integrated farming systems, underscoring their potential to enhance sustainable crop production, strengthen smallholder resilience, and contribute to the global sustainable development goals.