Diversity of chitinase-producing bacteria and their possible role in plant pest control

Abstract

In nature, chitin is the second most plentiful and renewable polysaccharide and is present among versatile group of organisms from fungi and nematodes to arthropods and crustaceans. Enzymatic degradation is the preferable environmentally safe mode of bioprocessing of this inert biopolymer. Chitin-scavenging enzyme-producing sources are covering the living groups from prokaryotes to plants, viruses, vertebrates, and even human. Current-day biotechnologies have raised the development of bioprocesses by using microbes especially bacteria. Bacteria that produce chitinases are with varieties of habitats ranging from Antarctic soil to hot spring, crustacean waste site, animal gut, and endophytic ecosystems. Chitin metabolism is a necessary life-supporting goings-on in agronomic plant pests like fungi, insects, and parasitic nematodes which are negatively proportionate to the agricultural production systems. Placement of such potent chitinolytic bacteria for plant fortification against attacking pests is a well-practiced, biotechnologically equipped biocontrol strategy. By-products of chitin by enzymatic hydrolysis, like oligomers or monomers, have several applications in persuading the plant defense systems. Carrying the host-defensive activity to biocontrol potentiality against plant pests, bacteria with chitinolytic property also behaved as a plant growth-promoting biofertilizing employee in modern-day sustainable agricultural practices. In this context, the distribution of chitinase-producing bacteria according to their diversity of habitats is studied, and the less explored habitats can be an arsenal for biocontrolling agents against plant pests.