Abiotic Stress Mitigation Through Plant-Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria

Abstract

Abiotic and biotic stresses highly impacts production of principal crops all around the world. Due to climate change, extreme abiotic factors like high and low temperatures, droughts, salinity, osmotic stress, heavy rains, floods and frost damages are posing grave threats to crop production. There is a dire need to mitigate these stresses, so in order to cope with such impacts, microorganisms can be employed as best alternatives to chemical inputs by exploiting their unique properties of tolerance to extreme environments, their ubiquity, their genetic diversity and their interaction with crop plants and by developing methods for their successful employment in agriculture production. Plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) mitigate abiotic stresses on plants most effectively through degradation of ACC, the ethylene precursor by bacterial ACC-deaminase and through biofilm and exopolysaccharide production. Alleviation of environmental stresses in crop plants using these microorganisms opens new and emerging applications in sustainable agriculture.