Abstract

Food security is one of the major challenges for scientific community and one that is vulnerable to an exponentially increasing global population, unsustainable agricultural practices, and a changing global climate. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations foresees that a 60% increase in world food production over the next two decades is required to sustain these populations. Another major problem is plant pathogens which are again the key threats for sustainable global food production and ecosystem sustainability. These pathogens cause around 25% reduction in the global crop yield every year. Globally, it has been also revealed that the food production system is accountable for loss of about 60% terrestrial biodiversity and increasing greenhouse gas emissions by 25%. Furthermore, climate change has intensified the frequency and severity of abiotic stresses including drought, high and low temperatures, nutrient limitation, and salinity which are an increasing challenge to crop production all over the world. The dependence of the agronomic sector on chemical fertilizers and pesticides is greatly harming the environment and human health. Thus, there is greater need for more reliable and sustainable approaches to deal with each of these global challenges and to move towards clean and green environment. The agricultural applications of beneficial microbes present in either in rhizosphere, internal tissues of plants or phyllosphere of plants is increasingly gaining interest. These beneficial microbes have evolved many mechanisms which contribute to improve the plant fitness, soil health, plant resistance against diseases and abiotic stresses ultimately increasing the productivity. Beneficial microbes sound to be affordable, smart, eco-friendly, economical and potential strategy. Knowledge of the vastness of microbial diversity associated with plants may be limited. The advancements in high-throughput molecular tools and next-generation strategies in genomics and proteomics have revolutionized our understanding of the widespread potential of beneficial microbes. The intervention of next-generation sequencing methods and chip-based technologies also seeks considerable attention from the scientific community for target-oriented exploration of beneficial microbial communities for agricultural and environmental sustainability.

Key words: Biodiversity, Biotechnological Applications, Plant-Microbe Interactions, Extremophilic microbes, Agricultural sustainability, Environmental sustainability