Warwick awarded €2.5m ERC grant to decode soil's hidden synchronization
Warwick researcher Prof. Gary Bending has won a €2.5 million ERC Advanced Grant to investigate how plants coordinate the daily rhythms of soil microbes around their roots, work that could transform soil management and crop health.
The soil immediately surrounding plant roots, the rhizosphere, is home to complex microbial communities that play a crucial role in plant health by making nutrients available for plants to grow. Recent research has shown that these microbes follow a daily rhythm. Since plants also have internal body clocks that control when they take up nutrients, plants might be synchronizing their microbial partners so that nutrient-cycling happens exactly when the plant needs it.
The newly funded RHYTHMS project will test this idea and, for the first time, reveal the mechanisms behind these microbial rhythms. Understanding this process could open new ways to manage soil for healthier, more productive plants, and help design agricultural systems that are both sustainable and resilient to global challenges.
Professor Gary Bending, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick said: “We know that microbes around plant roots follow daily cycles, but we do not yet understand what controls them or why they matter. RHYTHMS will allow us to test whether plants are effectively setting the clock for their microbial partners. If we can understand how plants and soil microbes coordinate their activity, it could fundamentally change the way we think about managing soils.”
This project is among the most competitively funded in European science. Of 3,329 proposals submitted to the ERC Advanced Grant programme, only 319 were selected (a 9.6% success rate). The €2.5 million award will enable a five-year investigation into how soil microbes synchronize with plant daily rhythms.
President of the European Research Council, Prof. Maria Leptin, said: ‘The new Advanced Grant projects demonstrate the creativity, ambition, and intellectual boldness that frontier research requires. The ERC’s role is to support researchers who are asking difficult scientific questions and want to venture into unexplored territory in pursuit of new knowledge. Congratulations to all our new grantees.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
For more information please contact:
Matt Higgs, PhD | Media & Communications Officer (Warwick Press Office)
Email: Matt.Higgs@warwick.ac.uk | Phone: +44(0)7880 175403
About the University of Warwick
Founded in 1965, the University of Warwick is a world-leading institution known for its commitment to era-defining innovation across research and education. A connected ecosystem of staff, students and alumni, the University fosters transformative learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and bold industry partnerships across state-of-the-art facilities in the UK and global satellite hubs. Here, spirited thinkers push boundaries, experiment, and challenge convention to create a better world.
About the ERC
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. With its additional Proof of Concept Grant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. A new ERC Plus Grants scheme has been open for applications since June 2026. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, the Scientific Council. Maria Leptin has been the President of the ERC since November 2021. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than €16 billion, as part of the Horizon Europe programme, which is under the responsibility of Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research, and Innovation.
23 June 2026