Agricultural Microbial Genetic Resources: Application and Preservation at Microbial Resource Centers

Abstract

To meet the increasing global demand for agriculture produce, the productivity of crops needs to be increased under declining soil quality and changing climate conditions. Emergence and widespread occurrence of plant pathogens and pests also pose a serious threat to agriculture. Plant–microbe interactions involve a beneficial, neutral, or negative effect on one or both partners. The plant-associated microorganisms perform complex roles in nutrient cycling and control of pathogens and induce stress tolerance. Several microbial strains have been isolated, screened, and evaluated for multiple plant growth-promoting activities and are rich resources to improve crop health and productivity. All these microbial resources are very important for agriculture research, and collection of such microbes provides researchers a way to look into the past and form a base for new scientific discoveries. Plant beneficial microorganisms have been preserved and maintained for a long time in a series of ex situ repositories across the globe, for their potential applications in sustainable agriculture. Similarly, a huge diversity of plant pathogens including bacteria and fungi have been isolated and preserved to be used as type specimens to breed disease-resistant crop varieties. Microbial resource centers (mBRCs) act as a repository of the diversity of microorganisms. The next-generation sequencing technologies have exhibited that only a small portion of microorganisms could be cultivated until now. It is expected that with high-throughput microbial cultivation approach, “culturomics” in conjunction with high-speed identification technique based on MALDI-TOF MS will lead to the cultivation of the not-yet-cultivated microorganisms, which can be harnessed to improve crop health and productivity. Adoption of culturomics in agriculture microbiology research will definitely increase the number of microbial strains, which will ultimately increase the load of mBRCs maintaining these cultures. In this chapter, we discussed various aspects of agriculturally important microbes and their documentation and preservation at mBRCs.