Climate change brings severe agricultural challenges as crops are exposed to increased levels of both abiotic (drought, waterlogging) and biotic stresses (fungal diseases). A large body of literature now shows that by enriching soils with bacteria possessing plant growth-promoting (PGP) characteristics, drought resilience in plants can be improved. As partners of the TOLERATE EU project (https://tolerate-eu-project.com/), we aim to further expand the scope of available PGP bacteria by expressing ancient genes from past geological times that have already experienced climate change and extreme heat and drought events. To achieve this aim, ancient DNA (aDNA) metagenomes from Arctic soils and sediments, spanning approximately 8,000 to 600,000 years before present, were reassembled, annotated, and screened for genes encoding potential stress-adaptive traits. This led to the identification of >130 paleo-phasins, small polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) granule-associated proteins. By assessing their sequence, structure and age diversity, a subset of paleo-phasins was selected for further studies. Subsequently, an E. coli chassis was engineered for their over-expression which resulted in the production and purification of one modern and two paleo-phasins at scale as well as greater solvent stress tolerance in the phasin-producing E. coli. Additionally, three Pseudomonas strains were engineered to constitutively express paleo-phasins increasing not only their solvent stress but also their osmotic stress tolerance. We are currently investigating how engineering impacts the bacteria’s already existing PGP properties. We are also assessing how the engineered Pseudomonas strains compare to their wild-type counterparts during bioaugmentation studies seeking to identify bacteria suitable for agricultural applications.