Microbial Biostimulants: A Sustainable Approach Toward Potential Plant Nutrition and Improved Crop Production
摘要
To fulfill the consumer food requirements free of potentially hazardous residues, modern agriculture increasingly calls for an alternative to synthetic chemicals, particularly fertilizers and pesticides. As a crucial component of an integrated crop management system, plant biostimulants enable modern agriculture to become more robust and sustainable. Microbial (rhizobacteria and fungi) biostimulants are a sustainable and efficient replacement for their synthetic counterparts, favorable to the human health, environment, biodiversity, ecosystem, and economy. The purpose of microbial biostimulants is to stimulate natural processes to improve plant uptake, consumption efficiency of nutrients, abiotic stress resistance, biocontrol, and crop quality when treated to foliage or the rhizosphere. Henceforth, worldwide attention has increased to using microbial biostimulants as an eco-friendly substitute for sustainable crop production. This chapter gives an overview of the concept, main categories of microbial biostimulants, and their approaches toward sustainability.