Can plant growth promoting rhizobacteria for agricultural sustainability and beneficial effect of the rhizosphere microbial community for plant growth and health?
Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) offer significant benefits for agricultural sustainability by improving crop productivity and reducing the environmental impact of farming. These beneficial soil bacteria, which inhabit the rhizosphere, enhance nutrient uptake by plants, fix nitrogen, and solubilize phosphates, thus enhancing soil fertility. PGPR also play a role in biological pest control, reducing the need for chemical pesticides. Moreover, they stimulate plant growth by producing phytohormones and help plants cope with abiotic stress factors like drought and salinity. However, it's important to note that the effectiveness of PGPR can vary depending on the specific bacterial strains, soil conditions, and plant species, which may limit their application in some contexts.
The rhizosphere's diverse microbial community also has numerous beneficial effects on plant growth and health. It contributes to nutrient cycling and uptake, improves soil structure, and suppresses soilborne pathogens. Furthermore, these microorganisms support organic matter decomposition, thus enhancing soil health. They can also help plants withstand abiotic stress, increasing their resilience.
The plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (or PGPR) are the beneficial microorganism that colonizes rhizosphere and help in promoting plant growth, protecting from biotic and abiotic stresses, and significantly increasing soil fertility. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) is a group of bacteria that can be found in the rhizosphere. The term “plant growth promoting bacteria” refers to bacteria that colonize the roots of plants (rhizosphere) that enhance plant growth. PGPR have become an important strategy in sustainable agriculture due to the possibility of reducing synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, promoting plant growth and health, and enhancing soil quality. The rhizosphere harbors diverse microbial groups that perform various functions and exert numerous effects on plant growth. They are involved in nutrient cycling, protecting from phytopathogens as well as under biotic and abiotic stress conditions, and some may act as plant pathogens. PGR regulate signaling pathways and stimulate resistance in plants. They are one of the fundamental frameworks, incorporating metabolic reactions which are important for various processes of plant life, improving crop quality and yield. These microbes improve soil fertility, soil health, and plant growth in a variety of ways, including improving nutrition (recycling, nutrient mobilization, nitrogen fixation), regulating phytohormone levels (cytokinins, gibberellic acid, ethylene, and indole acetic acid, among others), suppressing soil-borne pathogens. Thus, the rhizosphere is an area of recruit beneficial microbes of the plants by using root exudates to attract mutualistic interactions to enhance plant protection against pathogens or improve the growth through nutrient acquisition abilities. Beneficial rhizosphere organisms are generally classified into two broad groups based on their primary effects, i.e., their most well known beneficial effect on the plant: (i) microorganisms with direct effects on plant growth promotion [plant growth promoting microorganisms (PGPM)] and (ii) biological control agents. The rhizosphere microbiome confers fitness advantages to the plant host, including growth promotion, nutrient acquisition, soil-borne pathogen suppression and stress tolerance. Many members of the rhizosphere microbiome have been shown to regulate plant growth. The most significant effect of the microbes on earth is their ability to recycle the primary elements that make up all living systems, especially carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen (N). Primary production involves photosynthetic organisms which take up CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it to organic (cellular) material.
Plant microbiomes having the potential for growth and yield promotion in crops have particularly gathered surmountable interest nowadays. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are reported to provide several advantageous functions in plant rhizospheres, from nutrient solubilization to suppression of plant diseases, nitrogen (N2) fixation, and improved phytochemical composition. Biofertilizers are also made up of microbial formulations of PGPR strains that can either be immobilized or trapped on inert carrier materials to enhance plant growth and soil fertility. Over the decades, considerable strides have been made to understand, investigate, and formulate various PGPRs as alternative crop fertilization tools. The yield of various crops can be increased by about 25% and the use of inorganic N and P fertilizers be reduced by about 25–50 and 25% through these PGPR-based biofertilizer applications.
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