Fig. 1

Experimental flow charts for this study. a Long-term field experiments were established starting in 2007. Two wheat varieties, namely, Chinese Spring (CS) and Yunhan 618 (YH), were employed in this study. Bulk and rhizosphere soils were sampled during the jointing stage for amplicon and metagenomics sequencing. b Procedure for Experiment 1, the rhizosphere soil samples were used to generate microbial suspension cultures to conduct pot experiment. After inoculation, the root samples from different groups were collected for root morphology trait analysis. c Procedure for Experiment 2, isolation of rhizosphere fungi from Experiment 1 and construction of SynComs to confirm the ecological role of specific rhizosphere fungi recruited by plants in enhancing plant drought tolerance. Root-related parameters and plant gene expression were conducted by using phenotype analysis, SEM imaging, and RAN-Seq techniques when the roots were harvested after inoculation