Microbiome in Plant Health and Disease

Abstract

Global food security is the major challenge for agricultural scientists, but it should not be on the cost of depletion of nonrenewable resources such as soil. Due to the decrease in agricultural land, the use of synthetic chemical fertilizers to increase crop productivity has placed extra strain on fragile agroecosystem, thereby deteriorating its health. Plant-associated microbial communities interact with plants positively or negatively. These interactions are affected by the quality of root exudates and physicochemical properties of soil. Beneficial soil microbes have a number of plant development and growth-endorsing characteristics including biological nitrogen fixation, phytohormone production, nutrient mobilization and solubilization, biocontrol activity, production of hydrolytic enzymes, and stress tolerance induction. These traits of beneficial microbes can be harnessed with better soil health, improved plant growth and productivity, and improved stress tolerance of crop plants. Improvement in beneficial microbial populations through rhizosphere engineering or use of microbial inoculants and/or their metabolites can be helpful to modify the soil microbiome, leading to increased productivity of agroecosystem. Present review highlights the significance of soil microbiome with special reference to plant health. The symbiotic plant microbial communications and the most prominent plant growth-promoting mechanisms used by soil microbes are discussed. The potential applications of plant-microbe interactions for improving crop productivity under natural as well as stressful situations to maintain the sustainability of agroecosystem have been explained with examples, followed by their future prospects.