Field Crops: Sustainable Management by PGPR

This book is proposed to bring out the new scientific insight, original technologies, and novel methods that have general applications in relevance to field crops. The challenges to meet the food requirement of the burgeoning population and stabilized productivity of agriculture lands can only be met by a second green revolution. After steadily declining for over a decade, hunger is on the rise again, affecting on global scale. Therefore, crop yields must be increased substantially over the coming decades to keep pace with world food demand. Over the past few years, researchers have screened billions of beneficial bacteria across multiple sites to find out beneficial microbes to achieve the highest increase in crop yield particularly to the field crops. The beneficial bacteria known as plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are helpful for healthier crops with higher yields, while reducing the need for fertilizers and other chemicals. Thus, PGPR protect both plants and environment. Our understanding of microbes and their symbiotic relationships with plants is ever-evolving. In Asia, major crops including cereals, oilseed, vegetable fruit, tuber and non-tuber, cultivated on massive scale are insufficient to fulfil the demand of ever-increasing population. This book showcases naturally occurring beneficial microbes which can be applied to seeds before planting, to soil in furrow, or as spray so as to grow field crops without applying synthetic chemicals. The main focus includes mechanistic behaviours of PGPR used for sustainable cultivation of field crops. This book is an endeavour to review the current developments in the understanding of the role of microbes in yield improvement of field crops. This book covers the present state of knowledge of plant soil microbe interaction and its application in agricultural growth and productivity enhancement at the sharp-edge tech-oriented agriculture with eco-safe consequences and to replace eco-hazard of fertilizers with bio-fertilizers or microbial inoculants and thus is suitably entitled as "Field Crops: Sustainable Management by PGPR" which comprises 12 chapters contributed by leading scientists across the globe. The book is useful to agronomist, microbiologists, ecologists, plant pathologists, molecular biologists, environmentalists, policymakers, conservationists, and NGOs working for the crop production and productivity development and consequently over all agricultural significance.