Rhizospheric microbiome: Bio-based emerging strategies for sustainable agriculture development and future perspectives.

In the light of intensification of cropping practices and changing climatic conditions, nourishing a growing global population requires optimizing environmental sustainability and reducing ecosystem impacts of food production. The use of microbiological systems to ameliorate the agricultural production in a sustainable and eco-friendly way is widespread accepted as a future key-technology. However, the multitude of interaction possibilities between the numerous beneficial microbes and plants in their habitat calls for systematic analysis and management of the rhizospheric microbiome. This review exploits present and future strategies for rhizospheric microbiome management with the aim to generate a comprehensive understanding of the known tools and techniques. Significant information on the structure and dynamics of rhizospheric microbiota of isolated microbial communities is now available. These microbial communities have beneficial effects including increased plant growth, essential nutrient acquisition, pathogens tolerance, and increased abiotic as well as biotic stress tolerance such as drought, temperature, salinity and antagonistic activities against the phyto-pathogens. A better and comprehensive understanding of the various effects and microbial interactions can be gained by application of molecular approaches as extraction of DNA/RNA and other biochemical markers to analyze microbial soil diversity. Novel techniques like interactome network analysis and split-ubiquitin system framework will enable to gain more insight into communication and interactions between the proteins from microbes and plants. The aim of the analysis tasks leads to the novel approach of Rhizosphere microbiome engineering. The capability of forming the rhizospheric microbiome in a defined way will allow combining several microbes (e.g. bacteria and fungi) for a given environment (soil type and climatic zone) in order to exert beneficial influences on specific plants. This integration will require a large-scale effort among academic researchers, industry researchers and farmers to understand and manage interactions of plant-microbiomes within modern farming systems, and is clearly a multi-domain approach and can be mastered only jointly by microbiology, mathematics and information technology. These innovations will open up a new avenue for designing and implementing intensive farming microbiome management approaches to maximize resource productivity and stress tolerance of agro-ecosystems, which in return will create value to the increasing worldwide population, for both food production and consumption.

Synergism of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (LSE-2) nodule endophyte with Bradyrhizobium sp. (LSBR-3) for improving plant growth, nutrient acquisition and soil health in soybean.

The present study was aimed to assess the scope of native potential endophyte Pseudomonas aeruginosa (LSE-2) strain (KX925973) with recommended Bradyrhizobium sp. (LSBR-3) (KF906140) for synergistic effect to develop as consortium biofertilizer of soybean. A total of 28 non-rhizobial endophytic bacteria were isolated from cultivated and wild sp. of soybean. All isolates were screened for multifarious PGP traits viz. Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), phosphate (P) and zinc (Zn) solubilization, siderophore, cell wall degrading enzymes and pathogenicity. Compatible of LSBR-3 and LSE-2 enhanced IAA, P-solubilization, 1-aminocyclopropane-carboxylate deaminase and biofilm formation over the single inoculant treatment. Further, consortium was evaluated in vivo for growth, symbiotic traits, nutrient acquisition, soil quality parameters and yield attributes of soybean. Improvement in growth parameters were recorded with dual inoculant LSBR-3 + LSE-2 as compared to LSBR-3 alone and un-inoculated control treatments. Significantly (p ≥ 0.05) high symbiotic and soil quality parameters (phosphatase and soil dehydrogenase activity) was recorded with LSBR-3 + LSE-2 at vegetative and flowering stage as compared to LSBR-3 alone and un-inoculated control treatments. Single inoculation of LSBR-3 improved grain yield by 4.25% over the un-inoculated control treatment, further, enhancement in yield was recorded with consortium inoculant (LSBR-3 and LSE-2) by 3.47% over the LSBR-3 alone. Application of consortium inoculant (LSBR-3 + LSE-2) gave an additional income of Rs. 5089/ha over the un-inoculated control treatment. The results, thus strongly suggest that endophytic diazotroph LSE-2 can be used as potent bio-inoculant along with LSBR-3 as bio-enhancer for improving soybean productivity in a sustainable system.

A Pragmatic Approach to Getting Published: 35 Tips for Early Career Researchers.

It is trite to say "publish or perish," yet many early career researchers are often at a loss on how to best get their work published. With strong competition and many manuscripts submitted, it is difficult to convince editors and reviewers to opt for acceptance. A pragmatic approach to publishing may increase one's odds of success. Here, we - a group of postdocs in the field of plant science - present specific recommendations for early career scientists on advanced levels. We cannot provide a recipe-like set of instructions with success guaranteed, but we come from a broad background in plant science, with experience publishing in a number of journals of varying topics and impact factors. We provide tips, tricks, and tools for collaboration, journal selection, and achieving acceptance.

Effect of formulated root endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria fluorescent pseudomonads R62 and R81 on Vigna mungo.

In the present investigation, the effect of three beneficial organisms (root endophytic fungus Piriformospora indica (Pi) and pseudomonads strains R62 and R81) and their four different consortia (Pi+R62, Pi+R81, R62+R81, Pi+R62+R81) was investigated on the plant Vigna mungo through their inorganic carrier-based (talcum powder and vermiculite) formulations. All the treatments resulted in significant increase in growth parameters under glasshouse as well as field conditions and showed a consistency in their performance on moving from glasshouse to field conditions. In glasshouse conditions, a maximum increase of 4.5-fold in dry root weight and 3.9-fold in dry shoot weight compared to control was obtained with vermiculite-based consortium formulation of Pi+R81. In field studies using vermiculite as carrier, a maximum enhancement of 3.2-fold in dry root weight, 3.0-fold in dry shoot weight, 8.4-fold in number of nodules and 4.0-fold in number of pods in comparison to control was obtained with the bio-inoculant formulation containing consortium of Pi+R81. The same treatment also caused the highest improvement of 1.9-fold in nitrogen content and 1.7-fold in phosphorus content, while the highest increase of 1.4-fold in potassium content was obtained with Pi alone.

Spectrophotometric ferric ion biosensor from Pseudomonas fluorescens culture.

Pseudomonas fluorescens cultures produce fluorescent siderophores. By utilizing optimal conditions for maximizing siderophore production in shake flask cultures of P. fluorescens, we report successful characterization of the culture broth supernatant as a robust ferric ions biosensor. For characterizing the ferric ions biosensor, we tested the effects of pH, buffers, different ferric salts and possible interference by ferrous ions under different solution conditions. We find that the biosensor is very specific to ferric ions only with sensitivity to concentrations as low as 10 microM. Further, the response time of the biosensor is the shortest (approximately 5 min or smaller) for citrate as the accompanying anion with ferric ions. While the response time is longer than that expected of normal biosensors, it is well compensated by the simplicity and economics of the biosensor production. Extremely low standard deviations in several experimental repeats also highlight the robustness of the ferric ions biosensor. Most importantly, the biosensor is extremely easy to use due to its straightforward spectrophotometric applications. We also show the utility of the biosensor with the high resolution technique of fluorescence microscopy. Finally, we report a novel mechanistic finding that siderophores present in the culture broth supernatants have two distinct optically active sites on them, which can be monitored independently in presence or absence of ferric ions.