Plant-Microbial Symbiosis – Towards Improving Yield Productivity, Quality, and Sustainability of Crops
As the world population increases, we face new challenges to improve crop production yields to ensure enough food availability. Global warming, together with resource scarcity, loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, and pathogens proliferation, among others, represents a critical threat to crops around the world. Nowadays, the main agricultural strategy to achieve high yields relies on the overuse of chemical compounds. This practice has caused soil and water pollution through the years, making it even more difficult to grow healthy crops. Therefore, we face the urgent need for innovative strategies for the sustainable improvement of crop yields and quality. Thus, a promising strategy is the use of plant-microbe symbiotic properties to enhance plant development and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. The evolution of agricultural practices towards more ecological approaches has already begun. However, to better exploit these technologies, more research about these plant-microbe symbiotic interactions is needed, as well as the transfer of knowledge and breakthroughs on the field, hence the importance of specialized microbial culture collections to facilitate access to up-to-date information to the whole scientific, industrial and farmers community, and to promote stronger collaborations for contributing to food security.
Accordingly, this Article Collection aims to compile the most recent findings on plant-microbial beneficial interactions and serves to develop sustainable agricultural practices for increasing crop yields and quality. This strategy is under current and upcoming climatic challenges.
Potential topics for this Collection include, but are not limited to:
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Biocontrol agents’ bioprospection and development
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Plant growth promoting microorganisms’ bioprospecting
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Monitoring and biocontrol of recurring and emerging plant pathogens
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Secondary metabolites with biocontrol and/or growth promotion activities
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Beneficial microbes on plant growth promotion under in vitro, greenhouse, or in-field conditions
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Effects of beneficial microbes on plant resistance to biotic and/or abiotic stresses
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Microbial communities in agroecosystems
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Nutrients use efficiency in crops by beneficial microorganisms
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Bioinoculants formulation
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Molecular and metabolic mechanisms associated with plant-microbial interactions
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Genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and or/metabolomic studies of plant-microbial interactions
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Draft genomes of beneficial microorganisms for sustainable agriculture
All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection underwent desk assessment and peer-review as part of our standard editorial process. The Guest Advisors were not involved in peer-reviewing manuscripts unless they were an existing member of the Plant Signaling & Behavior Editorial Board.