Plants distribute about 20% of their photosynthesized carbon into the rhizosphere through root exudation. Therefore, the catabolic efficiency to utilize the root exudates is an important determinant on rhizosphere competence (the power ofrhizobacteria to colonize the rhizosphere).
Based on this concept, we developed rhizoSMASH, a bioinformatic tool that predicts gene clusters encoding enzymes degrading root exudates from bacterial genome sequences.