Consortia-based microbial inoculants for sustaining agricultural activities

• Published in: Applied soil ecology : a section of Agriculture, ecosystems & environment Vol. 176; p. 104503
• Main Author: Khan, Shams Tabrez
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-08-2022
• Subjects: Agricultural productivity; Consortia based biofertilizers; Environmental risks; Plant microbiome; Soil fertility; Plant microbiome; Consortia based biofertilizers; Agricultural productivity; Soil fertility; Environmental risks
• ISSN: 0929-1393; 1873-0272
• DOI: 10.1016/j.apsoil.2022.104503

The advancement of omics-based approaches and next-generation sequencing has unveiled the principles underlying the plant-microbiome interaction in the last decade. Although still challenging, relating the individual taxa in a microbiome to their function is becoming relatively easier. The knowledge of plant microbiome, especially the functional microbiome, has opened new avenues for translating this knowledge to formulate consortia based biofertilizers. Since these fertilizers include multiple plant growth-promoting (PGP) strains with multifarious PGP activities and show better resilience in the soil, these biofertilizers are advantageous over monoculture-based conventional biofertilizers. Plant microbiomes can be modified through the addition of organic and inorganic substances to the soil, the addition of synthetic microbial communities, the transplantation of microbial communities from healthy plants to another plant, and through various genetic engineering-based approaches. The development of consortia based biofertilizers and their industrial production still faces many challenges. Diversity even in the core plant microbiome at the variety level will require extensive knowledge-based cataloging of various plant microbiomes for designing crop-soil-environment-specific polymicrobial inoculants. The complex interplay of abiotic and biotic factors will further influence the design of such inoculants. Different growth rates and growth requirements of individual strains within a community will require new culture and production technologies to commercialize such polymicrobial inoculants. Studies showing the persistence of inoculated strains in soil even after 20 years of inoculation raises environmental and regulatory concerns.