Dr Chao Xiong is a Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia. His research interests centre on plant microbiomes, environmental pathogens, and soil health.

Dr Xiong is an early career scientist (PhD 2021) with a substantial publication record (~30 publications, ten highly-cited papers; H-index 20, total citations ~3,300). He has been awarded the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award 2026. He was recognised as a 2025 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.

He is recognised for his recent achievements in identifying core crop microbiomes and demonstrating how host selection shapes crop microbiome composition and functions (highly-cited paper, total citations ~650, FWCI 34.4). Currently he is a research fellow working with Distinguished Prof. Brajesh Singh to harness the diversity, functions, and interactions of soil and plant microbiomes for enhancing crop health and food security.

He is involved in multiple government and industry-funded projects associated with soil health and crop disease management. For example, he plays a pivotal role in a project funded by the Horticulture Innovation Australia (as a named collaborator). He contributed to the design and sampling, and led the sequencing, bioinformatics, and statistical analyses of over 10,000 crop and soil samples from global farms for the Global Initiative for Sustainable Agriculture and Environments.

His previous research included the effects of host selection on crop microbiome assembly, the temporal dynamics of plant microbiomes, the dominant diazotrophic taxa in crop microbiomes, and microbiome diversity and functions along the soil–plant continuum.

His previous studies have developed a high-throughput, DNA-based workflow for in-depth analyses of microbial diversity, functions, and interactions along the soil-root-leaf continuum under various biotic and abiotic stresses.