Summary
Published in Nature Communications in 2025, this review synthesises evidence for a soil-plant-human gut microbiome axis, arguing that microbial communities are linked across environmental and biological compartments from agricultural soils through plant tissues to the human digestive tract. The paper likely draws on cross-disciplinary literature spanning soil science, plant biology, and human microbiome research to assess the strength and nature of these connections. It situates soil health and farming practices within a broader framework relevant to human health outcomes, though the directional evidence for causality across the full axis will likely be characterised as emergent rather than definitive.
UK applicability
The conceptual framework is broadly applicable to UK agricultural policy, particularly given increasing interest in soil health under the Environmental Land Management scheme and the role of diverse farming systems in supporting ecosystem services; UK-specific empirical data on the soil-to-gut pathway remains limited but this review provides a useful evidence base for further targeted research.
Key measures
Microbial diversity indices; microbiome composition across soil, plant, and gut compartments; evidence of microbial transmission pathways; associations between agricultural management and human gut health outcomes
Outcomes reported
The study likely examines mechanistic and ecological linkages across the soil-plant-human gut microbiome continuum, reviewing how soil microbial diversity and agricultural management practices influence plant-associated microbiota and, subsequently, human gut microbiome composition and health outcomes.
Topic tags
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