Plant Microbiome for Improving Productivity and Resilience of Crops

Elisa Pellegrino* and Valentina Marrassini

CBioLabs, Institute of Life Sciences, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy

*Corresponding Author: Elisa Pellegrino, BioLabs, Institute of Life Sciences, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy.

Received: July 05, 2021; Published: August 09, 2021

Citation: Elisa Pellegrino and Valentina Marrassini. “Plant Microbiome for Improving Productivity and Resilience of Crops". Acta Scientific Agriculture 5.9 (2021): 14-16.

Agriculture has to provide increased yields to feed the growing global population, which is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 [1]. In 2010-2012, 12.5% of the world population, about 7.6 billion population, was estimated to be malnourished [2]. Agricultural yields are limited and made unpredictable by abiotic and biotic stresses. As example, fungal pathogens of wheat alone are estimated to cause yield losses of up to 29%, and other pathogens and various abiotic threats, such as flooding, drought and soil fertility, are causing further reduction of productions [3]. Moreover, climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of these threats [4]. Thus, agro-ecological challenges of the 21st century should be the minimization of the threat of pathogens and abiotic stresses and the reduction of the negative environmental impacts on agriculture through a sustainable intensification of management under fluctuating and unpredictable conditions [5]. The challenge to sustainable intensified agriculture practices is the deep exploitation of the plant microbiome both in the endosphere and rhizosphere in order to define strategies for the application of endophytes, symbionts and other beneficial microorganisms to agricultural systems [6]. However, an overlooked aspect is the negative impact of agrotechnical interventions, such as intensive tillage and chemical treatments, on plant microbiome.

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Copyright: © 2021 Elisa Pellegrino and Valentina Marrassini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.