Plant-Microbe Interactions in Agro-Ecological Perspectives: Volume 2: Microbial Interactions and Agro-Ecological Impacts

This book puts an updated account on functional aspects of multiphasic microbial interactions within and between plants and their ecosystem. Multipronged interaction in the soil microbial communities with the plants constitute a relay of mechanisms that make profound changes in plant and its micro-environment in the rhizopshere at physiological, biochemical and molecular levels. In agro-ecological perspectives, such interactions are known to recycle nutrients and regulate signalling molecules, phytohormones and other small molecules that help plant growth and development. Such aspects are described deeply in this book taking examples from various crop plants and microbial systems. Authors described the most advantageous prospects of plant-microbe interaction in terms of inoculation of beneficial microorganisms (microbial inoculants) with the plants in which microbes proliferate in the root rhizosphere system and benefit plants' with definite functions like fixation of nitrogen, solubilization and mobilization of P, K, Zn and production of phytohormones. The subject of this book and the content presented herein has great relevance to the agro-ecological sustainability of crop plants with the help of microbial interactions.

The chapters presented focus on defining and assessing the impact of beneficial microbial interactions on different soils, crops and abiotic conditions. This volume entails about exploiting beneficial microbial interactions to help plants under abiotic conditions, microbe-mediated induced systemic tolerance, role of mycorrhizal interactions in improving plant tolerance against stresses, PGPR as nutrient mobilizers, phytostimulants, antagonists and biocontrol agents, plant interactions with Trichoderma and other bioagents for sustainable intensification in agriculture, cyanobacteria as PGPRs, plant microbiome for crop management and phytoremediation and rhizoremediation using microbial communities. The overall content entrust advanced knowledge and applicability of diversified biotechnological, techno-commercial and agro-ecological aspects of microbial interactions and inoculants as inputs, which upon inoculation with crop plants benefit them in multiple ways.

Dhananjaya P. Singh is presently Principal Scientist in Biotechnology at ICAR-National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, Maunath Bhanjan, India. He did his Masters' degree from G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar and Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. His research interests include plant-microbe interactions, bioprospecting of metabolites of microbial and plant origin, microbe-mediated stress management in plants, metabolomics-driven search for small molecules and bioinformatics in microbial research. He was involved with the development of supercomputation infrastructure facility for agricultural bioinformatics in microbial domain at ICAR-NBAIM under National Agricultural Bioinformatics Grid (NABG) program of ICAR. He has been awarded with various prestigious awards including Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Award for Scientific Excellence in 2016 from Marina Labs. Currently he has published more than 134 publications including 73 research papers, 16 scientific reviews, 25 book chapters, 20 magazine articles, several workshop manuals/training modules, three edited books and one Indian patent.

Harikesh B. Singh is presently Professor & Head, Department of Mycology and Plant Pathology at Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University. He served the State Agriculture University, Central University and CSIR Institute in teaching, research and extension roles. His major research focus is on bioinnoculats, biological control of plant pathogens and nano-biotechnology. In recognition of Prof. Singh’s scientific contributions and leadership in the field of plant pathology, he has been honored with several prestigious awards, notable being CSIR Technology Prize for Biological Sciences by Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, M.S. Swaminathan award by Society for Plant Research, Vigyan Bharti Award, Prof. V.P. Bhide Memorial Award, Society for Plant Research, Scientist of Excellence Awards, BRSI Industrial Medal Award, Jyoti Sangam Award, Akshyavat Samman, Distinguish Scientist Award by the Society for Research Development in Agriculture, Prof. Panchanan Maheshwari Medal by Indian Botanical Society, Rashtriya Gaurav Award by IIFS, Plant Pathology Leader Award by IPS, CSIR Award for S&T Innovation for Rural Development (CAIRD), Environment Conservation Award, Vigyan Ratna by UP Council of Science and Technology. Dr. Singh has been the Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Currently, he is also serving as an associate/academic/board editor with journals of international repute. Professor Singh has published more than 300 publications, several training modules/manuals, edited 17 books and 20 patents (USA, Canada, PCT).

Ratna Prabha obtained her Master's degree in Bioinformatics from Banasthali Vidyapeeth and Ph.D. degree in Biotechnology from Mewar University, India. She has been awarded with SERB-National Post Doctoral Fellowship of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India and is presently affiliated to Chhattisgarh Swami Vivekanand Technical University, Bhilai. She has been engaged in developing various digital databases on plants and microbes, published 2 edited books, many book chapters, various research papers and review articles in the journals of International repute. Her current research interest lies in microbe-mediated stress management in plants, database development, comparative microbial genome analysis, phylogenomics and pangenome analysis of prokaryotic genomes and metagenomics data analysis. She has completed several bioinformatics demonstration tasks at different National training programs on bioinformatics and computational biology. She has been awarded Young Scientist at G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, S&T, SIRI, Telangana and CGCOST, Chhatisgarh.