Abstract
Simple SummaryDemand for organically grown crops has risen globally due to its healthier and safer food products. From a sustainability perspective, organic farming offers an eco-friendly cultivation system that minimizes agrochemicals and producing food with little or no environmental footprint. However, organic agriculture’s biggest drawback is the generally lower and variable yield in contrast to conventional farming. Compatible with organic farming, the selective use of biostimulants can close the apparent yield gap between organic and conventional cultivation systems. A biostimulant is defined as natural microorganisms (bacteria, fungi) or biologically active substances that are able to improve plant growth and yield through several processes. Biostimulants are derived from a range of natural resources including organic materials (composts, seaweeds), manures (earthworms, fish, insects) and extracts derived from microbes, plant, insect or animal origin. The current trend is indicative that a mixture of biostimulants is generally delivering better growth, yield and quality rather than applying biostimulant individually. When used correctly, biostimulants are known to help plants cope with stressful situations like drought, salinity, extreme temperatures and even certain diseases. More research is needed to understand the different biostimulants, key components, and also to adjust the formulations to improve their reliability in the field.Demand for organically grown food crops is rising substantially annually owing to their contributions to human health. However, organic farm production is still generally lower compared to conventional farming. Nutrient availability, content consistency, uptake, assimilation, and crop responses to various stresses were reported as critical yield-limiting factors in many organic farming systems. In recent years, plant biostimulants (BSs) have gained much interest from researchers and growers, and with the objective of integrating these products to enhance nutrient use efficiency (NUE), crop performance, and delivering better stress resilience in organic-related farming. This review gave an overview of direct and indirect mechanisms of microbial and non-microbial BSs in enhancing plant nutrient uptake, physiological status, productivity, resilience to various stressors, and soil-microbe-plant interactions. BSs offer a promising, innovative and sustainable strategy to supplement and replace agrochemicals in the near future. With greater mechanistic clarity, designing purposeful combinations of microbial and non-microbial BSs that would interact synergistically and deliver desired outcomes in terms of acceptable yield and high-quality products sustainably will be pivotal. Understanding these mechanisms will improve the next generation of novel and well-characterized BSs, combining microbial and non-microbial BSs strategically with specific desired synergistic bio-stimulatory action, to deliver enhanced plant growth, yield, quality, and resilience consistently in organic-related cultivation.
Highlights
The pressing concern of global food security combined with projections of global population increase and climate change poses a major threat to agriculture in terms of reliability, sustainability, maximizing productivity while minimizing the agro-ecosystems’environmental impact
This review examined bio-stimulatory actions/mechanisms, scientific in microbial and non-microbial
Researchers working on acclimatizing pineapple plants in a greenhouse found that humic acid and plant growth-promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) (Burkholderia spp.) increased 50% and 81%, respectively, whereas their combined application resulted in achieving the best growth (105%) [218]
Summary
The pressing concern of global food security combined with projections of global population increase and climate change poses a major threat to agriculture in terms of reliability, sustainability, maximizing productivity while minimizing the agro-ecosystems’. Research and regulations required to produce resistant varieties through traditional breeding approaches would take decades to reach the market place with formal approvals [22] To address these contemporary challenges in an environment-friendly, practical, and sustainable way, organic farming practices seek innovative solutions focusing on nutrient use efficiency (NUE), consistency in nutrient availability, abiotic stress tolerance, crop yield, and quality [9,23,24]. Little is known about the Designing target-specific BSs formulations would be pivotal for increasing NUE, consisinteractive effectsavailability, between microbial and non-microbial their ecological effects on tency in nutrient crop growth, and resilience BSs, in supporting a renaissance in rhizosphere microbes, rhizosphere, and plant metabolic dynamics. The review identified issues hindering improvements in crop yield and resilience as the world moves towards meeting the challenges of sustainable farming
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