The world is haunted by climate change and global warming, posing critical challenges to plant health and productivity. Hence, it is now imperative to think about ecosystem resilience and conservation. Microbiomes from extreme environments with plant growth-promoting and stress-relieving properties can be used as inoculum for growing plants during stress. Hence, our study aims to explore the root and soil microbiome of native and hardy Shepherdia species available in Utah, USA. The native Shepherdia species, S. rotudifolia was selected for the study. We compared the microbial diversity of S. rotudifolia from three different locations in Utah. The plants' bulk soil, rhizosphere, and root were collected for the study from Torrey, Colorado City, and Cannonville in Utah and brought to the Utah State University, Logan, for further processing. DNA extraction was done from all the samples and sequenced for 16S rRNA region. The bulk soil of roundleaf buffaloberry from Torrey is highest in organic matter, while that from Colorado City is highest in salinity but lowest in NPK and most micro-nutrients. Bulk soil and rhizosphere bacterial alpha diversity differ significantly (p=0.05) among the locations of roundleaf buffaloberry; however, there is no difference in root endosphere alpha diversity among the locations. The bacterial community composition of roundleaf buffaloberry from Torrey is significantly different from the other two locations. Proteobacteria and Actinobacteriota are the dominant phyla in the bulk soil and rhizosphere of roundleaf buffaloberry from all three locations; however, Actinobacteriota dominates in root in all three locations. The genus composition of bulk soil, rhizosphere, and root of roundleaf buffaloberry is very diverse among the three locations. Frankia, the well-known nitrogen-fixing bacteria, is prevalent in the root samples of S. rotundifolia from Cannonville and has lesser abundance in the other two locations. Fifty-seven bacteria were isolated from the rhizosphere of the S. rotudifolia on different nutrient media. These isolates are being tested for eight plant growth-promoting traits, such as the production of indole acetic acid, siderophore, catalase, protease, ACC deaminase activity, nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, and sulfur-oxidizing activity
