Application of beneficial microorganisms and their effects on soil, plants, and the environment: the scientific legacy o
- PDF / 191,024 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 97 Downloads / 168 Views
INTRODUCTION
Application of beneficial microorganisms and their effects on soil, plants, and the environment: the scientific legacy of Professor Yoav Bashan Luz E. de-Bashan 1,2 & Paolo Nannipieri 3 & Hani Antoun 4 & Robert G. Lindermann 5
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Yoav Bashan was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1951, and died in Auburn, Alabama, in 2018. He started his scientific career in the 1980s, initially in the Hebrew University and in the Weizmann Institute (Israel), through 1990 when he moved to La Paz (Mexico) where he was actively working until his death. During his career, Professor Bashan was involved in many aspects of plant-bacteria interactions, microbial-assisted ecological restoration of disturbed arid environments, environmental microbiology of the hot deserts, and the development of bacterial inoculants for agriculture and environmental purposes. His key contributions of a nearly 40-year scientific career will be summarized in this Introduction.
Contribution to scientific terms and concepts Since its introduction by Kloepper et al. (1980), the term plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) had been used to refer to beneficial bacteria associated with roots. However, in 1998, Professor Bashan proposed two new terms for general * Luz E. de-Bashan [email protected]
scientific use that would seem to encompass all the plant beneficial bacteria: “biocontrol plant growth-promoting bacteria” (Biocontrol-PGPB) and “plant growth-promoting bacteria” (PGPB) (Bashan and Holguin 1998). Since then, the term PGPB is considered synonymous with PGPR, although it is a more inclusive one, as it comprises also endophytic bacteria, phyllosphere bacteria, and bacteria associated with microalgae. Most of Yoav Bashan’s research was focused on the PGPB Azospirillum spp. After years studying the mode of action of the bacteria, he proposed two hypotheses: in 1990, he published the Additive Hypothesis, stating that the effect of Azospirillum on plants cannot be reduced to one specific mechanism, but to several mechanisms operating either at the same time or sequentially (Bashan and Levanony 1990). In 2010, he presented the updated Multiple Mechanisms Hypothesis, based on the assumption that there is no single mechanism involved in promoting plant growth with Azospirillum, but rather a combination of a few or many mechanisms in each specific case of inoculation. The mechanisms may vary with plant species, Azospirillum strain, and environmental conditions prevailing during the interaction (Bashan and de-Bashan 2010). In 1986, Professor Bashan developed an alginate-based encapsulated inoculants of Azospirillum brasilense (Bashan 1986); that was the start point of the use of synthetic inoculants as an alternative to the delivery of PGPB in the field. Years after, he overhauled the initial inoculant and proved that by reducing the size of the inoculant there was a possibility to develop a highly effective powder-like formulation (Bashan et al. 2002).
1
Environmental Microbiology Group
Data Loading...
