The Role of Soil Microbes in Crop Biofortification
Agronomic practices across the planet are becoming largely unsustainable in their current forms. With a growing population expected to reach ~9 billion by the year 2050, more sustainable ways to produce the world’s main crops are needed. The main focus of
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Darren Heenan Daly, Siva L.S. Velivelli, and Barbara Doyle Prestwich
Abstract
Agronomic practices across the planet are becoming largely unsustainable in their current forms. With a growing population expected to reach ~9 billion by the year 2050, more sustainable ways to produce the world’s main crops are needed. The main focus of current agronomic practices, especially in the case of cereal crops, is increased grain number and weight sometimes at the expense of nutritional content leading, in some instances, to micronutrient deficiencies. Micronutrient deficiencies are often termed hidden hunger, giving the false appearance that an individual is consuming sufficient amounts of nutrients. To counteract this problem, it is crucial that a sustainable solution to increase micronutrient concentration in a diverse range of crops is found. Plant growth- promoting microbes (PGPM) represents a sustainable solution to this problem. These PGPM can be divided into two main groups: plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) and plant growth-promoting fungi (PGPF). These microbes are capable of increasing micronutrient concentrations in many crops worldwide. This chapter will focus on the use of these microbes to increase micronutrient content, in particular selenium, iron and zinc, using studies conducted over the last two decades right up to the present day, revealing how plant-microbe interactions and our ever-growing knowledge of these interactions can aid in the micronutrient biofortification of crops in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way.
D.H. Daly • B.D. Prestwich (*) School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science, University College Cork, Butler Building, Distillery Fields, North Mall Campus, Cork, Ireland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] S.L.S. Velivelli Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 975 North Warson Road, St. Louis, MO 63132, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 V.S. Meena et al. (eds.), Agriculturally Important Microbes for Sustainable Agriculture, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5589-8_16
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Keywords
Plant growth-promoting microbes • Sustainability • Micronutrients • Biofortification
16.1 Introduction The pressure to produce sufficient nutritionally rich food in a sustainable manner has never been greater. With a growing global population (~9 billion by 2050), changing demographics and climate, pressure on resources such as water and land use, emergence of novel and more virulent pests and pathogens and changes in regulations with respect to the use of agrichemicals, food security is predicted to become increasingly vulnerable (FAO 2016). The United Nations through the ‘Sustainable Development Goals Project’ (UN 2015) has identified 17 goals to transform our world. Second on this list is the goal to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’. Nowadays, ~800 million people are undernourished with the vast majority living in developing countries. It is
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