Recent findings show that certain microbes including Sphingomonas can improve plants’ tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses and promote growth. Most Sphingomonas genes involved into biotic interactions with plants remain uncharacterized. This project aims to elucidate how different local Sphingomonas strains interact with three different model plants A. thaliana, barley and poplar under different conditions. A first step is to generate closed genomes of local bacterial strains.