Chapter 13 - Microbe-mediated abiotic stress management for sustainable agriculture

Abstract

Abiotic stresses have a significant influence on the growth of major crops all over the world. Extreme abiotic conditions such as high and low temperatures, droughts, salinity, osmotic stress, heavy rains, floods, and frost damage all pose serious hazards to crop production as a result of climate change. Microorganisms can be used as the best alternative to chemical inputs by leveraging their key qualities of tolerance to severe environments, ubiquity, genetic diversity, and crop plant interactions as well as by establishing ways for their employability in agricultural production. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are particularly effective in mitigating abiotic stresses on plants by degrading ACC, the ethylene precursor, with bacterial ACC deaminase and producing biofilms and exopolysaccharides. The use of these microbes to alleviate environmental stresses in crop plants has opened up new and growing avenues in sustainable agriculture.