Abstract
Growing environmental concerns are potentially narrowing global yield capacity of agricultural systems. Climate change is the most significant problem the world is currently facing. To meet global food demand, food production must be doubled by 2050; over exploitation of arable lands using unsustainable techniques might resolve food demand issues, but they have negative environmental effects. Current crop production systems are a major reason for changing global climate through diminishing biodiversity, physical and chemical soil degradation, and water pollution. The over application of fertilizers and pesticides contribute to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and toxic soil depositions. At this crucial time, there is a pressing need to transition to more sustainable crop production practices, ones that concentrate more on promoting sustainable mechanisms, which enable crops to grow well in resource limited and environmentally challenging environments, and also develop crops with greater resource use efficiency that have optimum sustainable yields across a wider array of environmental conditions. The phytomicrobiome is considered as one of the best strategies; a better alternative for sustainable agriculture, and a viable solution to meet the twin challenges of global food security and environmental stability. Use of the phytomicrobiome, due to its sustainable and environmentally friendly mechanisms of plant growth promotion, is becoming more widespread in the agricultural industry. Therefore, in this review, we emphasize the contribution of beneficial phytomicrobiome members, particularly plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), as a strategy to sustainable improvement of plant growth and production in the face of climate change. Also, the roles of soil dwelling microbes in stress amelioration, nutrient supply (nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization), and phytohormone production along with the factors that could potentially affect their efficiency have been discussed extensively. Lastly, limitations to expansion and use of biobased techniques, for instance, the perspective of crop producers, indigenous microbial competition and regulatory approval are discussed. This review largely focusses on the importance and need of sustainable and environmentally friendly approaches such as biobased/PGPR-based techniques in our agricultural systems, especially in the context of current climate change conditions, which are almost certain to worsen in near future.
Highlights
To feed a dramatically growing world population, agricultural output must increase by 50% to sustain ∼9 billion people by 2050 (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012)
In the entire ecosystem, bacterial community composition is significantly co-related to soil properties; this is important as microbial abundance can mediate greenhouse gas (GHG) emission (Ho et al, 2017)
Phosphorus solubilizing bacteria (PSB) has been reported to reduce required P dosage by 25% (Sundara et al, 2002), and its influence increases when co-inoculated with other plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) or AMF, as suggested by a 50% reduction in P supplementation (Khan et al, 2009)
Summary
To feed a dramatically growing world population, agricultural output must increase by 50% to sustain ∼9 billion people by 2050 (Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012). Climate change is rearing up, and with it, significant increases in global temperature, and occurrence of other abiotic stresses that are adversely affecting crop productivity. In such a situation, sustainable practices and the application of environmentally friendly technologies can help break this feedforward loop by improving resource use efficiency and increasing yield under a range of more extreme environmental conditions (Pareek et al, 2020), with the aim to improve healthy food production while reducing unsustainable inputs, thereby controlling extreme climatic conditions, and to improve soil health by sequestrating soil carbon, maintaining soil organic matter and inorganic nutrients (Drost et al, 2020). The growth of host plants depend on microbe-toplant signals (Ortíz-Castro et al, 2009) In this way, utilization of phytomicrobiomes (microbial inoculation, signal exogenous application) can be deployed to achieve the goal of establishing a more sustainable and resilient agricultural production system without additional chemical fertilization application
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