Rhizobacterial Efficacy for Sustainable Crop Productivity in Agroecosystems

Abstract

Sustainable agricultural development is best defined as the management and conservation of agricultural resource base in an appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable way. Thus, sustainable agriculture should ensure availability, access, utilization and stability of resources to present and future generations. However, ecosystem resilience has emerged as a key factor to reach the goal of sustainability. Resilience is defined as the capability of a system to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from the effects of an undergoing change so as to ensure the preservation or restoration of its essential basic structures, identity and functions. There has been substantial increase in the productivity of the crops with the use of chemical inputs to provide nutrition to the crop and to control pests and diseases. However, these have several negative effects like development of pathogen resistance to the applied agents and their non-target environmental impacts, degradation of soil productivity, depletion of non-renewable sources of energy (Prasad et al., 2014) etc. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) commonly called rhizobacteria, have received prominent attention because of their multifarious activities to improve plant growth and disease control ensuring crop yields in a sustainable way. The application of PGPR to crops offers an environment friendly approach of reducing chemical inputs (Prasad et al., 2005, 2015)