Beneficial Microbes for Sustainable Agriculture Under Stress Conditions : Functional Traits and Regulation

Abstract

Crop yields are affected by various types of abiotic stresses that reduce agricultural productivity thereby causing challenging food-security issues. Among the different abiotic stresses that plants are exposed to, abnormal growth temperatures are considered as a major type of abiotic stress next to salt and drought stress. While the increase in temperatures can cause changes in the growth period and the geographical distribution of plants, a reduction in temperatures can restrict normal growth and cause a lot of damage to plant tissues below and above ground. Such low-temperature stress can be divided into chilling (>0°C) and freezing stress (≤0°C) based on the temperatures to which the plants are exposed. From observation of the overall responses in plants to both these types of low-temperature stresses, it can be understood that the responses in plants often overlap and the differences observed are often in the magnitude and duration of the response. Therefore, in this chapter, we consider them commonly as cold stress and try to understand the changes in plants that occur in response to cold stress and the innate responses occurring in plant cells. Then, a brief account of several plant growth–promoting bacteria and their induced responses in plants is given, which is followed by a discussion on the multiple strategies used by cold-adapted microbial inoculants to help plants overcome cold-stress conditions. Overall, the chapter provides a glimpse of the changes in plants and induced cold-stress acclimation due to microorganisms in their vicinity during cold-stress conditions. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved including those for text and data mining AI training and similar technologies.