Résumé
Plants and their associated microbiota have long interacted, forming an assemblage of species oftenreferred to as a holobiont. Microbiomes can greatly expand the genomic and metabolic capabilities oftheir plant hosts, providing or facilitating a range of essential life-supporting functions, including nutri-ent acquisition, immune modulation, growth promotion, biocontrol, and abiotic stress tolerance. Theseinteractions are mainly driven by root exudates, whose composition reflects contradictory attractive andrepulsive behaviors, as they are highly diverse and contain nutritional, antimicrobial and signaling mol-ecules. We characterized the assemblages and ecological network microbial populations most influenced bychanges in root exudation of four pearl millet inbred lines with contrasting rhizosphere aggregation pat-terns and the correlation of these populations with specific metabolic pathways and compounds fromroots, shoots, and root exudates. We provide plausible evidence for the importance of heritable plant traits carried by the inbred lines inmodulating plant-associated microbiomes by establishing diverse metabolic profiles in their tissue androot exudates and the strong correlation of these two interconnected aspects manifested by co-inertiaanalysis. Root exudates composition is revealed to be a major component of root-associated microbiome modu-lation of the pearl millet lines in correlation with their soil aggregation capacities.