Abstract
The use of plant growth promoting bacteria may prove useful in developing strategies to facilitate plant growth under normal as well as diverse abiotic stress conditions. The application of microbes with the aim of improving nutrients availability for plants is an important practice and necessary for sustainable agriculture. During the past couple of decades, the use of microbial inoculants for sustainable agriculture has increased tremendously in various parts of the world. Significant increases in growth and yield of agronomically important crops in response to inoculation with plant growth promoting (PGP) microbes have been repeatedly reported. The actual biodiversity of PGP microbes belong to different groups including Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Balneolaeota Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Spirochaetes. PGP bacteria are naturally occurring soil bacteria that aggressively colonize plant roots and benefit plants by providing growth promotion either directly by solubilization of phosphorus, potassium and zinc; production of indole acetic acids, gibberellic acid, cytokinin; biological nitrogen fixation or in-directly by production of ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, siderophore and biocontrol against different plant pathogens. In this review, we have discussed method of isolation, characterization, identification and biodiversity of bacteria associated with crops and further mechanisms of plant growth promotion under the normal as well as diverse abiotic stress conditions.
Highlights
To provide food security to the ever increasing population greater agriculture production is a pressing need in 21st century
This review focuses on bacterial biodiversity, its characterization and mechanisms of plant growth promoting (PGP) under normal as well as abiotic stress conditions
Three strains were identified as Arthrobacter methylotrophus, Arthrobacter nicotinovorans and Kocuria kristinae exhibited more than six different plant growth promoting activities at low temperature
Summary
To provide food security to the ever increasing population greater agriculture production is a pressing need in 21st century. These bacteria were screened in vitro for multifarious plant growth promoting attributes such as solubilization of phosphorus, potassium, zinc; production of indole acetic acids, hydrogen cyanide, gibberellic acid, siderophore and activities of nitrogen fixation, ACC deaminase and biocontrol against Rhizoctonia solani and Macrophomina phaseolina at low temperature (4 °C).
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