Evaluation of plant growth-promoting actinomycetes on Vigna

Abstract

The legume genus Vigna are grown in warm temperate and tropical regions globally but are particularly crucial to human nutrition in large parts of tropical Africa and Asia. It can also serve as forage crops. Among the Vigna species, the Asian Vigna has received little research initiatives than African Vigna such as cowpea and mung bean. From the last decade, the research initiatives are getting increased for both the Vigna species in the context of genetic resource analysis and genome mapping. The production status has remained stagnant in many countries due to long list of pest and pathogen attacks and abiotic stresses. Use of plant growth-promoting microbes for improving the productivity of Vigna species is still in its infancy, and there were very few field evaluation studies conducted. This chapter brings an overview of several reports which documented the various facets of plant growth-promoting microbes, particularly of actinomycetes, in increasing growth performance and productivity of Vigna.