Prof. dr. Xu Cheng is currently a researcher and Ph.D. supervisor at the Agricultural Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He received his PhD in 2016 from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Possessing over 10 year’s study and work on microbe-plant (beneficial) interactions, multidisciplinary research skills and expertise were developed and utilized. A series of studies on the important role of microorganisms in plant growth and health were conducted, such as identification of the regulatory mechanism by which rhizosphere strains change plant root morphology and systemic resistance; establishment of high-throughput system for analyzing functional microbial strains; construction of synthetic microbial communities that improve crop stress resistance. He has published more than 20 scientific research articles in international academic journals such as The ISME Journal, Environmental Microbiology and Nature Plant, and has been authorized with 5 national invention patents. He served as a guest editor chairing a special issue of Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology and a youth editor of iMeta. When he returned to China in 2021 December, he was awarded as the Shenzhen Overseas High-level Talent, as a member joined the Chinese Society for Microbiology and the National Microbial Strain Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Union.