Climate change is creating an urgent need for new technologies to allow agriculture to adapt to predicted increases in drought severity. Exopolysaccharides (EPS) and EPSproducing bacteria are one potential solution, as previous studies have found EPS-treated soil has higher water potential than soils without EPS at the same water content level, thus better facilitating movement of water into plant roots in drier soils. However, EPSproducing bacteria and other plant growth promoting bacteria suffer have inconsistent performance due to the complex regulation controlling these functions. Using synthetic biology to uncouple these functions from their native regulation and place them under synthetic, predictable regulation is one potential solution, though it is limited by the level of current knowledge of these complex traits and potential fitness burdens that would be detrimental to field colonization. I engineered the soil bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens for control over transcription of algR, the transcription factor responsible for regulating transcription of the genes for biosynthesis of the EPS alginate. While the system is not well studied in P. fluorescens, the alginate biosynthetic and regulatory system is highly conserved with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, for which the current mechanism of alginate regulation relies heavily upon differential transcription of algR. However, differential expression of algR in P. fluorescens did not allow for alginate production. Transcriptomics reveals that, unlike in P. aeruginosa, only one of the alginate biosynthetic transcripts is upregulated with increased AlgR. However, the other transcript’s expression patterns at various concentrations of AlgR reveals potential transcription factor cross-talk, and several potential candidates were identified. Deciphering this complex regulatory landscape is key to controlling alginate production, as directly controlling expression of these two transcripts might not be a viable strategy. Alginate production is metabolically intensive and may result in a fitness burden, however, P. fluorescens differentially regulates several other metabolic genes, which could serve to alter overall cellular processes for sustainable alginate production. From this thesis, I establish that deciphering the unique regulation of P. fluorescens’ algD operon and the overall impact of AlgR on fitness are important next steps in developing soil Pseudomonas species to promote plant growth and resilience under drought.