Vol. 7, Issue 1 (2018)

Author(s):
Jagjot Kaur, Gulab Pandove and Madhurama Gangwar

Abstract:
According to world guesstimates, abiotic factors leads to an average of 50% yield losses in agricultural crops like high temperature (20%), low temperature (7%), salinity (10%), drought (9%) and other forms of stresses (4%). The implication of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) to conflict the harmful effects of ecological stresses and enhance plant growth and productivity by direct and indirect mechanisms has been reported. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) live in association with roots of plant, elicit the largest influence on plants, immunity and affecting their productivity. PGPR can facilitate plant growth indirectly by reducing plant pathogens or directly by influencing phytohormone production (e.g. auxin, gibberallin or cytokinin), by facilitating the uptake of nutrients from the environment, and/or by lowering the levels of plant ethylene enymatically, nitrogen fixation, mineral phosphate solubilization (MPS), sequestration of iron by secretion of siderophores by release of volatiles. PGPR are now being used worldwide as bio-inoculants/biofertilizers to promote plant growth and development. Microbial inoculants could play an important role in stress management in the edaphic stress prone areas. Thus adaptability of microbial inoculants over wide range of pH, temperature and salt concentration is crucial for their application under different agro climatic conditions. Peat is the most successively used carrier because of high surface area and high water holding capacity. Peat based carriers are not easy to use with sophisticated planting equipment. Liquid inoculants can be easily adapted to advanced seeding equipment. This review will overview the various mechanisms by which microbial inoculants could mitigate the impact of climate change.