Jay Prakash Verma

The escalating global demand for food, coupled with the environmental degradation caused by conventional farming practices, has intensified the need for sustainable agricultural solutions. Climate change exacerbates these challenges by diminishing soil fertility, disrupting water resources, and amplifying pest and disease pressures, necessitating alternatives to agrochemical reliant systems like the Green Revolution. Biofertilizers use beneficial microbes to boost crop yields and improve soil health. Plant growth-promoting microbiome, abundant in the rhizosphere, phyllosphere, endosphere, contribute significantly to this paradigm through their production of phytohormones, nutrient solubilization, and biocontrol properties, reducing reliance on synthetic inputs. This chapter explores how biofertilizers amplify plant-microbe interactions to improve nutrient availability, suppress pathogens, and bolster plant resilience against stresses. By integrating biofertilizers into innovative cropping systems, such as those combining trap and repellent crops, agricultural productivity and ecological balance can be enhanced. However, challenges remain, including inconsistent efficacy and gaps in understanding soil-plant-microbe dynamics. Drawing from the multifaceted roles of plant growth promoting microbiome and other microbial inoculants, this chapter elucidates their mechanisms nitrogen fixation, mineral solubilization, and disease suppression and underscores their potential to revolutionize sustainable agriculture, offering a pathway to resilient, high-yield farming systems amid climate uncertainty.

Chemical inputs in agricultural fields as a pesticides or fertilizers, resulted in huge challenges for the environment, soil fertility, and unsafe agricultural products that increased risk of human health and environmental pollution. Here, we focused on the importance of actinomycetes in agricultural field. Actinomycetes a Gram-positive bacteria and have several functional roles to produce bioactive compounds such as biocontrol agents, biofertilizers, and biopesticides. Due to the overloading demand of food and the emergence of new plant pathogens, the current agriculture practices often heavily rely on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Therefore, actinomycetes could play a significant role as Plant Growth-Promoting Microorganisms (PGPM) that ability to fix N₂, produce ACC deaminase, siderophore, IAA, solubilize potassium and phosphorus, as well as HCN and several antibiotic productions, which helps to reduce the use of agrochemicals (chemical fertilizers and pesticides). These PGPMs can provide environment friendly solutions for crop protection and improvement. Beyond agriculture, actinomycetes also have the ability to synthesize an array of metabolites that suppress plant pathogens, promote plant growth, and contribute to the soil health, making them valuable in sustainable farming practices. Commercially, actinomycete-based formulations are increasingly utilization in vegetable production and other agricultural systems as substitutes for synthetic inputs. Many studies published on actinomycetes that highlighted their role in synthesizing pharmaceutically relevant compounds such as antibiotics, antifungal and anti-cancerous compounds for large-scale industrial applications. In this review, we tried to summarize the functional attributes of actinomycetes for industrial as well as agriculture applications.

Among the biotic stresses, wilt disease severely affects tomato quality and productivity globally. The causal organism of this disease is Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (Fol), which is very well known and has a significant impact on the productivity of other crops as well. Efforts have been made to investigate the effect of plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) on alleviating tomato wilt disease. Four PGPB strains, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa BHUPSB01 (T1), Pseudomonas putida BHUPSB04 (T2), Paenibacillus polymyxa BHUPSB16 (T3), and Bacillus cereus IESDJP-V4 (T4), were used as inocula to treat Fol-challenged plants. The results revealed that PGPB treatments T1, T2, T3, and T4 were able to decrease the severity of Fusarium wilt in the tomato plants at different levels. Among the treatments, T3 displayed the strongest protective effect, with the lowest disease frequency, which was 15.25%. There were no significant differences observed in parameters such as fruit yield and relative water content in the PGPB-inoculated plants, although T3 and T4 showed minimal electrolyte leakage. Significant changes in chlorophyll fluorescence were also recorded. A lower level of H₂O₂ and malondialdehyde (MDA) was observed in the T3 and T4 treatments. In addition, proline accumulation was highest in the T3-treated plants. Antioxidative enzyme activities, such as catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), and superoxide dismutase (SOD), significantly increased in the PGPB-treated plants. Furthermore, the highest phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity was reported in the T3 and T4 plants, respectively. The PGPB-treated plants showed elevated expression of the PAL, PPO, PR3, PR2, SOD, CAT, and PO genes. This study’s results reveal that PGPB strains can be utilized as biocontrol agents (BCAs) to enhance tomato resistance against Fusarium wilt.

Drought is the most important abiotic stress that restricts the genetically predetermined yield potential of the crops. In the present study, four tomato varieties: Kashi Vishesh, Kashi Aman, Kashi Abhiman, and Kashi Amrit, were used to study the effect of PGPMs (plant growth-promoting microorganisms). PGPM strains, Bacillus megaterium BHUPSB14, Pseudomonas fluorescens BHUPSB06, Pseudomonas aeruginosa BHUPSB01, Pseudomonas putida BHUPSB0, Paenibacillus polymixa BHUPSB17, and Trichoderma horzianum, were used as the consortium. The control group was irrigated up to 80% of field capacity, while 7-, 14-, and 21-day water-deficit-exposed (DWD) plants’ pot soil moisture was maintained to 40, 25, and 15% of the field capacity, both with and without the PGPM inoculation condition. The physiological parameters, such as electrolyte leakage, relative water content, photosynthetic efficiency, and chlorophyll color index, were significantly improved by PGPM application under progressive drought stress, compared to the control. PGPM application enhanced the proline accumulation and reduced the formation of hydrogen peroxide and lipid peroxidation under drought stress. The plant growth attributes were significantly increased by PGPM application. The Kashi Amrit variety showed the highest fruit yield among the four varieties under all the treatments. The PGPM consortium application also improved the soil physico-biological properties and nutrient availability in the soil. The PGPM consortium used in this study can potentially mitigate drought stress on tomato in drought-prone regions and act as a biofertilizer. The present study will open a new avenue of drought stress management in tomato.

We report a complete genome of Bacillus stercoris BHUJPV-SS7 isolated from soil which contains 4,299 predicted genes and 4,012 predicted protein-coding genes within its chromosome (4,115,399 bp), and has 43.51% G + C content and a predicted beta-1,4-glucanase (EC 3.2.1.4) gene.

Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L.) are used as a good source of proteins and energy in the diets of various organisms including humans and animals. Chickpea straws can serve as an alternative option for forage for different ruminants. This research mainly focussed on screening the effects of adding beneficial chickpea seed endophytes on increasing the nutritional properties of the different edible parts of chickpea plants. Two efficient chickpea seed endophytes (Enterobacter sp. strain BHUJPCS-2 and BHUJPCS-8) were selected and applied to the chickpea seeds before sowing in the experiment conducted on clay pots. Chickpea seeds treated with both endophytes showed improved plant growth and biomass accumulation. Notably, improvements in the uptake of mineral nutrients were found in the foliage, pericarp, and seed of the chickpea plants. Additionally, nutritional properties such as total phenolics (0.47, 0.25, and 0.55 folds), total protein (0.04, 0.21, and 0.18 folds), carbohydrate content (0.31, 0.32, and 0.31 folds), and total flavonoid content (0.45, 027, and 0.8 folds) were increased in different parts (foliage, pericarp, and seed) of the chickpea plants compared to the control plants. The seed endophyte-treated plants showed a significant increase in mineral accumulation and improvement in nutrition in the different edible parts of chickpea plants. The results showed that the seed endophyte-mediated increase in dietary and nutrient value of the different parts (pericarp, foliage, and seeds) of chickpea are consumed by humans, whereas the other parts (pericarp and foliage) are used as alternative options for forage and chaff in livestock diets and may have direct effects on their nutritional conditions.