Revisiting Plant–Microbe Interactions and Microbial Consortia Application for Enhancing Sustainable Agriculture: A Review

Abstract

The present scenario of agricultural sector is dependent hugely on the use of chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides that impact the nutritional quality, health status, and productivity of the crops. Moreover, continuous release of these chemical inputs causes toxic compounds such as metals to accumulate in the soil and move to the plants with prolonged exposure, which ultimately impact the human health. Hence, it becomes necessary to bring out the alternatives to chemical pesticides/fertilizers for improvement of agricultural outputs. The rhizosphere of plant is an important niche with abundant microorganisms residing in it. They possess the properties of plant growth promotion, disease suppression, removal of toxic compounds, and assimilating nutrients to plants. Utilizing such beneficial microbes for crop productivity presents an efficient way to modulate the crop yield and productivity by maintaining healthy status and quality of the plants through bioformulations. To understand these microbial formulation compositions, it becomes essential to understand the processes going on in the rhizosphere as well as their concrete identification for better utilization of the microbial diversity such as plant growth–promoting bacteria and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. Hence, with this background, the present review article highlights the plant microbiome aboveground and belowground, importance of microbial inoculants in various plant species, and their subsequent interactive mechanisms for sustainable agriculture.

Friends or Foes—Microbial Interactions in Nature

“…Representatives of the genera Pseudomonas, Flavobacteria, and Bacillus can protect plants from phytopathogens through direct interaction with the pathogen or by inducing systemic resistance in plant hosts [305,306]. In general, microorganisms residing in a plant's rhizosphere are essential for plant growth promotion, disease suppression, removing toxic compounds, and assimilating nutrients to plants [307]. Moreover, utilizing such beneficial microbes for crop productivity presents an efficient way to modulate the crop yield and productivity by maintaining the health status and quality of the plants [308][309][310].…”

“…Moreover, utilizing such beneficial microbes for crop productivity presents an efficient way to modulate the crop yield and productivity by maintaining the health status and quality of the plants [308][309][310]. The utilization of beneficial microbe-plant interactions is now turning into the standard against the chemical-based and synthetic pesticides and fertilizers in the agriculture industry [307,311,312]. Moreover, the contribution of the microbiota to the nutrition of the hosts is known for many years.…”

The “beauty in the beast”—the multiple uses of Priestia megaterium in biotechnology

“…Whole-cell applications: P. megaterium as a plant growth-promoting bacterium Recently, within the last 20 years, scientists have discovered that the plant microbiome is essential for the survival of plants in changing environmental conditions including invasion by pathogenic microorganisms and insects (Berger and Gutjahr 2021;Genre et al 2020;Haskett et al 2020;Ortiz and Sansinenea 2021;Prsic and Ongena 2020;Vishwakarma et al 2020;Zhang et al 2021a). In conclusion, the health and growth of cultural plants can be influenced by the composition of its root and leave microbiome (Ray et al 2020).…”

A novel plant-fungal association reveals fundamental sRNA and gene expression reprogramming at the onset of symbiosis

“…Beneficial microbes have a significant impact on crop production, due to their effects on plant health and yield. However, considerable gaps in knowledge prior to their establishment in agricultural practice remain, including systemic identification of microbial abundance and diversity in various ecosystems, understanding the influence of climate, soil conditions, management practices, and, lastly, elucidating the intricacies of molecular mechanisms governing establishment of colonization and nutrient acquisition [ 7 ].…”