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:
- Biocontrol agents’ bioprospection and development.
- Plant growth promoting microorganisms’ bioprospecting.
- Monitoring and biocontrol of recurring and emerging plant pathogens.
- Secondary metabolites with biocontrol and/or growth promotion activities.
- Beneficial microbes on plant growth promotion under in vitro, greenhouse, or in-field conditions.
- Effects of beneficial microbes on plant resistance to biotic and/or abiotic stresses.
- Microbial communities in agroecosystems.
- Nutrients use efficiency in crops by beneficial microorganisms.
- Bioinoculants formulation.
- Molecular and metabolic mechanisms associated with plant-microbial interactions.
- Genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and or/metabolomic studies of plant-microbial interactions.
- Draft genomes of beneficial microorganisms for sustainable agriculture.
Please contact Aggie Topolska at [email protected] with any queries regarding this Article Collection.
Dr. Sergio de los Santos-Villalobos is the director and founder of the Laboratorio de Biotecnología del Recurso Microbiano (LBRM) and the microbial culture collection Colección de Microorganismos Edáficos y Endófitos Nativos (COLMENA) from the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Mexico, where he also works as a researcher and professor. His lines of research are focused on the ecology of microorganisms of agricultural importance, plant-microbe interactions at the physiological, metabolic, and molecular levels, bioformulation and production of microbial inoculants, and conservation of the agroecosystems through the use of isotopic techniques.
Dr. Fannie I. Parra-Cota has a Ph.D. in plant biotechnology and is currently a researcher at the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrícolas y Pecuarias (INIFAP), Mexico. Her lines of research focus mainly on the genetics and functional diversity of soil microbial communities, plant-microbe interactions at metabolic and molecular levels, and biological control of agricultural pests.
Dr. Amelia C. Montoya-Martínez has a Ph.D. in biological sciences from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, Mexico. Her work has focused on plant-microbe interactions, from beneficial microorganisms to fungal pathogens. She currently has a postdoc position at Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, Mexico, working on bioprospecting and testing bacterial strains as biological control agents against fungal pathogens of cereal and vegetable crops.
Dr. Ixchel Campos-Avelar has a Ph.D. in microbiology and biotechnology from the University of Montpellier, France. After working at the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México, on the antibacterial properties of magnetic nanoparticles, she joined the Laboratorio de Biotecnología del Recurso Microbiano at the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora, México, where she is currently working as a postdoc. Her work focuses on the biological control of fungal pathogens and the deciphering of the mechanisms involved.
