Abstract
Biotic and abiotic stresses, climate change, and limited land availability are major threats to crop production. The priority research focus for scientists nowadays is to device strategies for maximized crop output from the existing agricultural area. The natural plant microbiome contains numerous plant-beneficial bacteria, which have been used as biofertilizers for sustainable agriculture production. Only a limited number (≈ 1%) of this microbiome has been cultured. For the 99% of microbiome fraction, which is still uncultured, the role in the rhizosphere environment remains concealed. By using advanced techniques of sequencing, metagenomics, and bioinformatics, the scientists can unlock the huge unculturable microbial diversity and tap this metabolically active, beneficial microbes to engineer the rhizosphere. Targeted-isolation and application of inocula from microbiome can reshape the rhizosphere structure or its functioning. This chapter summarizes recent studies on soil metagenomics with potential application for rhizosphere engineering.
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