Microbial biotechnology for sustainable agriculture: Current research and future challenges
Abstract Agriculture is a sector that is badly affected by the environmental abiotic stresses like nutrient limitation, high temperature, salinity, draught, pathogens, and other climatic disasters. All these stresses result in the huge economic losses of several crops. Microbial biotechnology is one of the superior methods to get over from the entire problem and enhances the crop productivity. This chapter enlightens the conclusion and future prospects of book “Trends of microbial biotechnology for sustainable agriculture and biomedicine systems: diversity and functional perspectives,” which contains the research on microbiomes from soil and other sources and their applications for sustainable agriculture. This chapter deals with the biodiversity of plant microbes and there interaction with plants through epiphytic, rhizospheric and endophytic parts of the plant and there biotechnological applications in agriculture for sustainable development. Microbes linked with plants can be used as biofertilizers to enhance the nutrition of the crops like iron, zinc, phosphorus, and potassium. In this chapter, it is also documented that microbes can also be used as biocontrol agent that protects the crop from several plant pathogens that affects that crop productivity in huge number.