Sustainable agriculture: possible trajectories from mutualistic symbiosis and plant neodomestication

•A more sustainable agriculture is required to accompany the human population growth.•Crops have probably lost their ability to control bad versus good mutualists.•Opportunities to make use of efficient mutualists for a plant neodomestication exist.•An ecologically intensive agriculture taking advantage of native mutualists is likely.

Food demand will increase concomitantly with human population. Food production therefore needs to be high enough and, at the same time, minimize damage to the environment. This equation cannot be solved with current strategies. Based on recent findings, new trajectories for agriculture and plant breeding which take into account the belowground compartment and evolution of mutualistic strategy, are proposed in this opinion article. In this context, we argue that plant breeders have the opportunity to make use of native arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis in an innovative ecologically intensive agriculture.