Role of Microbial Bio-inoculants in Sustainable Agriculture

The increasing global demand for food has led agricultural crop producers to rely heavily on the use of chemical fertilizers to enhance production yields. However, the unregulated use of these chemicals has resulted in negative consequences for both human health and soil fertility. Biofertilizers have emerged as an alternative to these chemicals. Microbial inoculants used as biofertilizers and biopesticides have proven to be effective and environment-friendly approaches towards sustainable agriculture, without causing any known adverse effects or pollution. Recently, concerns have been raised regarding the impact of climate change on the beneficial traits of these bio-inoculants in nature. In order to preserve and more efficiently utilize plant-associated beneficial microbes, genetic tools have been employed to modify them and prevent them from altering their essential phenotypes. In this chapter, we have evaluated various genera of microbes that are useful in crop production, as well as genetic approaches to enhance their efficiency. The use of genetic engineering and nanotechnologies has been shown to yield precise benefits to agriculture and has therefore been discussed in the context of the benefits associated with microbes in agriculture. Furthermore, strategies have been elaborated upon to expand the production of bio-inoculants from their current bottleneck status in laboratory research to large-scale industrial production, with challenges for routine agricultural application.