Crop Microbes and Biocontrol of Plant Phytopathogens

Plants, whether wild or cultivated alike, are subject to diseases. The widespread presence of plant infections changes with each season, which merely depends on the existence of the phytopathogen, environmental factors, and crops and varieties cultivated in the field. The diseases caused to cultivated crops have caused terrible losses to human beings in several ways by affecting the production in terms of quality and quantity. So, to manage these diseases caused by a variety of phytopathogens, crop disease management strategy has been developed that mainly relies on anticipating the occurrence of diseases by using exclusion of pathogen and eradication of pathogen by treatment with chemical fungicides and crop rotation. The application of fungicides to reduce the occurrence of plant diseases has been proposed for more than a 100 years and still recently new fungicides continue to be developed for plant diseases management. But excessive application of fungicides resulted in serious environmental issues, health-related issues, and development of fungicide resistance in phytopathogens, which is also a big problem today. To sort out these problems, recently a new strategy was developed in terms of biological control of phytopathogens in order to combat phytopathogens, where the antagonistic microorganisms are used as biocontrol agents. Among the antagonistic microorganisms engaged in plant disease management include fungi like Trichoderma spp. and bacteria like Pseudomonas spp. and Bacillus spp. These biocontrol agents are eco-friendly, environmentally friendly, harmless, and easy to handle.