Bioinoculants: Understanding chickpea rhizobia in providing sustainable agriculture

Abstract

Maximizing subsequent yield, growth, and fertility of Cicer arietinum (chickpea) and other legumes through chemical applications, excessive cropping, and improper agricultural practices has resulted in reduced productivity, incompetent rhizobial interactions, decreased diversity, and increased pathogen-plant susceptibility. The notion of self-regulated and self-sustainable plants and rhizobial strains provides a paradigm towards biological remediation, utilizing beneficial bioinoculants, such as PGPR Pseudomonas sp., Bacillus sp., and AM fungi, to optimize growth. Symbiotic interactions infuse the rhizosphere as a competent and regulated environment promoting plant growth parameters and inducing systemic resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses. Reduced incidence of wilt, suppression of antagonistic microbes, and development of transgenic crops fix plants and Rhizobium with genetic traits that initiate pathogen-derived resistance and prompt metabolic demise of the invasive organism. These methods provide optimism to farmers, eliminating the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticidal sprays, by shifting towards biological entities that market soil sustainability, rhizosphere competency, induced pathogen resistance, and constructive genetic conciliation.