From triangle to pyramid: Understanding host-pathogen-microniome-environment interplay for sustainable,...

Understanding plant disease development requires moving beyond the classic disease triangle, which considers the host, pathogen, and environment. Recent advances in multi-omics have highlighted the importance of a disease pyramid that integrates the host, pathogen, microbiome, and environment to capture the complex interactions among these core biological/ecological components. This pyramid framework emphasizes how host genetic architecture, pathogen traits, microbiome dynamics, and environmental conditions collectively and interactively shape disease outcomes, plant phenotypes, and adaptive potential. The conceptual expansion from the disease triangle to a pyramid model reflects this shift, providing a more holistic and dynamic view of plant disease ecology. Environmental factors regulate host susceptibility and restructure both pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbial communities, thereby influencing infection severity and disease progression. Multi-omics approaches-encompassing hostomics, pathomics, microbiomics, and enviromics-hold strong promise for dissecting these interactions, enabling predictive disease modeling and the development of sustainable management strategies. Moreover, integrating enviromics data into resistance breeding enables the identification of key environmental variables and their interactions with host genotypes and pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes, thereby supporting the deployment of durable resistance across diverse agroecosystems. Together, these perspectives advance a systems-level understanding of plant health and open new avenues for disease management through omics-driven breeding, microbiome-informed strategies, and environmentally responsive interventions.